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I 
TOUR 



3 
2, 



ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND FRANCE, 



THE YEARS 1836, 1827, 1828, AND 1829. 



WITH REMARKS OK 



THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE INHABITANTS, AND ANECDOTES OF 
DISTINGUISHED PUBLIC CHARACTERS. 



IN A SERIES OP LETTERS. 



BY A GERMAN PRINCE. 



Pei 

PHILADELPHIA : 
CAREY, LEA & BLANCHARD, CHESTNUT STREET. 

1833. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



FIRST AND SECOND VOLS. OF THE LONDON EDITION 



The following work being the genuine expression of the thoughts and 
feelings excited by this country in the mind of a foreigner whose station, 
education, and intelligence seem to. promise no common degree of aptitude 
for the difficult task of appreciating England, it has been thought worth 
while to give it to the English public. The Translator is perfectly aware 
that the author has been led, or has fallen, into some errors both of fact 
and inference. These he has not thought it expedient to correct. Every 
candid traveller will pronounce such errors inevitable ; for from what 
class in any country is perfectly accurate and impartial information to be 
obtained ? And in a country so divided by party and sectarian hostilities 
and prejudices as England, how must this difficulty be increased! The 
book is therefore given unaltered.; except that some few omissions have 
been made of facts and anecdotes, either familiar to us, though new to 
Germans, or trivial in themselves. 

Opinions have been retained throughout, without the least attempt at 
change or colouring. That on some important subjects they are not those 
of the mass of Englishmen, will, it is presumed, astonish no reflecting 
man. They bear strong marks of that individuality which characterizes 
modes of thinking in Germany, where men are no more accustomed to 
claim the right of thinking for others, than to renounce that of thinking 
for themselves. This characteristic of the German mind stands in strong 
contrast to the sectarian division of opinion in England. The sentiments 
of the author are therefore to be regarded simply as his own, and not as 
a sample of those of any sect or class in Germany : still less are they 
proposed for adoption or imitation here. The opinion he pronounces on 
French and German philosophy is, for example by no means in accord- 
ance with the popular sentiment of his country. 

The Letters, as will be seen from the Preface, were published as the 
work of a deceased person. They have excited great attention in Ger- 



iv TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 

many ; and rumour has ascribed them to Prince Piickler Muskau, a sub- 
ject of Prussia, who is known to have travelled in England and Ireland 
about the period at which these Letters were written. He has even been 
mentioned as the author in the Berlin newspapers. As, however, he has 
not thought fit to accept the authorship, we have no right to fix it upon 
him ; though the public voice of Germany has perhaps sufficiently esta- 
blished his claim to it. At all events, the Letters contain allusions to his 
rank, which fully justify us in ascribing them to a German Prince. They 
likewise furnish internal evidence of his being a man not only accustomed 
to the society of his equals, but conversant with the world under various 
aspects, and with literature and art : of fertile imagination; of unfettered 
and intrepid understanding ; and accustomed to consider every subject in 
a large, tolerant, and original manner. 

The author of the • Briefe eines Verstorbenen," 1 be he who he may, has 
had the honour and happiness of drawing forth a critique from the pen of 
Gothe. None but those incapable of estimating the unapproachable lite- 
rary merits of that illustrious man, will be surprised that the Translator 
should be desirous of giving the authority of so potential a voice to the 
book which it has been his difficult task to render into English. 

The following extracts from Gothe's article in the Berliner Jahrbuch 
will do more to recommend the work than all that could be added here : — 

" The writer appears a perfect and experienced man of the world, endowed 
with talents, and with a quick apprehension ; formed by a varied social existence, 
by travel and extensive connections ; likewise a thorough, liberal-minded German, 
versed in literature and art. 

* * * " He is also a good companion even in not the best 

company, and yet without ever losing his own dignity. * • 

" Descriptions of natural scenery form the chief part of the Letters ; but of these 
materials he avails himself with admirable skill. England, Wales, and especially Ire- 
land, are drawn in a masterly manner. We can hardly believe but that he wrote 
the description with the object immediately before his eyes. As he carefully com- 
mitted to paper the events of every day at its close, the impressions are most dis- 
tinct and lively. His vivacity and quick sense of enjoyment enable him to depict 
the most monotonous scenery with perfect individual variety. It is only from his 
pictorial talent that the ruined abbeys and castles, the bare rocks and scarcely per- 
vious moors of Ireland, become remarkable or endurable : — poverty and careless 
gaiety, opulence and absurdity, would repel us at every step. The hunting par- 
ties, the drinking bouts, which succeed each other in an unbroken series, are tole- 
rable because he can tolerate them. We feel, as with a beloved travelling compa- 
nion, that we cannot bear to leave him, even where the surrounding circumstances 
are least inviting ; for he has the art of amusing and exhilarating himself and us. 
Before it sets, the sun once more breaks through the parted clouds, and gives to 
our astonished view an unexpected world of light and shadow, colour and contrast. 

" His remarks on natural scenery, which he views with the eye of an artist, and 
his successive and yet cursive description of his route, are truly admirable. 

" After leading us as patient companions of his pilgrimage, he introduces us into 



TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. V 

distinguished society. He visits the famous O'Connell in his remote and scarcely 
accessible residence, and works out the picture which we had formed to ourselves 
from previous descriptions of this wonderful man. He next attends popular meet- 
ing's, and hears speeches from O'Connell, Shiel, and other remarkable persons. He 
takes the interest of a man of humanity and sense in the great question which agi- 
tates Ireland ; but has too clear an insight into all the complicated considerations it 
involves to be carried away by exaggerated hopes. * * • 

" The great charm, however, which attaches us to his side, consists in the moral 
manifestations of his nature which run through the book : his clear understanding 
and simple natural manners render him highly interesting. We are agreeably af- 
fected by the sight of a right-minded and kind-hearted man, who describes with 
charming frankness the conflict between will and accomplishment. 

" We represent him to ourselves as of dignified and prepossessing exterior. He 
knows how instantly to place himself on an equality with high and low, and to be 
welcome to all. That he excites the attention of women is natural enough, — he at- 
tracts and is attracted ; but his experience of the world enables him to terminate 
any little affaires du catur without violence or indecorum. 

" The journey was undertaken very recently, and brings us the latest intelligence 
from the countries which he viewed with an acute, clear, and comprehensive eye. 

He gradually affords us a clue to his own character. We see before us a finely 
constituted being, endowed with great cap acity ; born to great external advantages 
and felicities ; but in whom a lively spirit of enterprise is not united to constancy 
and perseverance ; whence he experiences frequent failure and disappointment 
But this very defect gives him that peculiar genial aimlessness, which to the reader 
is the charm of his travels. *•**»* 

" His descriptions are equally good in the various regions for which talents of 
such different kinds are required. The wildest and the loveliest scenes of nature ; 
buildings, and works of art ; incidents of every kind ; individual character and so- 
cial groups, — all are treated with the same clear perception, the same easy unaffect- 
ed grace. *•»••#. 

" The peculiarities of English manners and habits are drawn vividly and dis- 
tinctly, and without exaggeration. We acquire a lively idea of that wonderful com- 
bination, that luxuriant growth, — of that insular life which is based in boundless 
wealth and civil freedom, in universal monotony and manifold diversity ; formal 
and capricious, active and torpid, energetic and dull, comfortable and tedious, the 
envy and the derision of the world. 

"Like other unprejudiced travellers of modern times, our author is not very 
much enchanted with the English form of existence : his cordial and sincere admi- 
ration are often accompanied by unsparing censure. * • 

" He is by no means inclined to favour the faults and weaknesses of the English ; 
and in these cases he has the greatest and best among them — those whose reputa- 
tion is universal — on his side." — GOthe. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



TO THE 



THIRD AND FOURTH VOLS. OF THE LONDON EDITION. 



Since it has been suggested that I ought not to suffer several glaring, 
though (as I think) unimportant, errors to pass unnoticed, as if I were not 
aware of them, I mention the most conspicuous. The Author says the 
Royal Exchange was built by Charles II. ; that the piece of water at 
Blenheim covers eight hundred acres, whereas I am told it covers only 
two hundred and fifty ; — he calls the great Warwick Beauchamp, and not 
Neville : — alluding to Sir Walter Scott's ' Kenilworth,' he calls Varney, 
Vernon ; and he lays the scene of Varney's murder of his wife at Kenil- 
worth, instead of at Cumnor. — There may be more such mistakes for 
aught I know. Such are to be found in every account of a foreign coun- 
try I have ever seen, with the exception of some two or three works of 
faultless correctness and veracity, which nobody reads. Of these Carsten 
Niebuhr's may be taken as a representative. Whoever has had the good 
fortune to see a work on Germany, which was considerably accredited 
here, commented with marginal notes by an intelligent and veracious Ger- 
man, may have had a fair opportunity of comparing the sum of misstate- 
ments between the two countries. Of our ' natural enemies' I say no- 
thing, nor of our irritable child, whom so much has been done to irritate, 
across the Atlantic. Of Italian travellers, Eustace is given up as nearly 
a romance-writer ; Englishmen believe Forsyth to be extremely correct, 
but instructed Italians point out errors grosser than any of those here no- 
ticed. After all, errors of the kind are (except to tourists) comparatively 
unimportant, when they relate to countries which are not explored with 
a view to science, but merely for the purpose of giving the general aspect, 
moral and physical, of the country. Whoever succeeds in doing that 
With anything like fairness, may be regarded as having effected as much 
as the extreme difficulty of obtaining accurate information, even on the 
spot, will admit ; and, in a work like the present, which makes no pre- 
tension to any higher character than that of chit-chat letters to an intimate 
friend, will have accomplished all that it is fair to look for. 



TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. VII 

It has also been suggested that I ought to have given the names of the 
persons alluded to at length, instead of merely copying the initials given 
in the original. To this I can only reply, that had I the inclination, I 
am totally without the power. I know nothing of any of the persons or 
incidents recorded ; nor have I any means, which are not equally at the 
command of all my readers, of guessing to whom the Author alludes in 
any case. Inquiries of the kind are as foreign to my tastes and pursuits 
as the society in question is from my station in life. I have regarded 
these incidents solely in the light of illustrations of national manners ; 
and the applying them to individuals is a matter in which I should take 
not the slightest interest. But since it is obvious that this is not the com- 
mon taste, I have rather thought to obscure than to elucidate those parts 
of the book which are objectionably personal. If I could have done this 
still more, without entirely changing the character of the work, I should 
have done it. But by any such material change I should have made my- 
self, in some sort, responsible for its contents : which, as a mere trans- 
lator, I can in no way be held to be. Whenever I find that the English 
public are likely to receive, with any degree of favour, such a German 
work as it would be my greatest pride and pleasure to render into my na- 
tive tongue to the best of my ability, I shall be too happy to share with 
the illustrious and humanizing poets and philosophers of Germany any 
censure, as I should feel it the highest honour to partake in the minutest 
portion of their glory. 

Hitherto I have found no encouragement to hope that any such work 
as I should care to identify myself with, would find readers. 

The Reviews and other Journals (which, for the most part, have been 
divided between excessive praise, and censure equally excessive, of this 
slight but clever work) have, of course, not been sparing in allusions to 
the personal character of the Author. Of that, and of all that concerns 
his residence here, I am utterly ignorant. When I projected the transla- 
tion of the book, I believed it to be, what the title announces, The Let- 
ters of a deceased Person. All that I now know of the Author's personal 
history while in England, (if information from such sources may be called 
knowledge,) is gained from the writings of his reviewers. Whether their 
representations be true or false, I have not the slightest interest in dis- 
cussing. Even if every several anecdote related by him were a lie, it 
would remain to be considered, whether or not his remarks on En- 
gland and English society tallied in the main with those of other instruct- 
ed foreigners, and with those of the more impartial and enlightened por- 
tion of Englishmen. 



PREFACE OF THE EDITOR 



The Letters which we now lay before the public have this peculiarity", 
— that, with very few and unimportant exceptions, they were actually 
written at the moment as they appear in these pages. 

It may, therefore, easily be imagined that they were written without 
the most distant view to publicity. The writer, however, is now num- 
bered with the departed. Many scruples are thus removed : and as his 
Letters contain not only many interesting details, but more especially in- 
ternal evidence of a real individuality ; as they are written with no less 
uncoloured freedom than perfect impartiality, — we thought that these 
elements are not so abundant in our literature as to render such a work a 
superfluity. 

It was, I must confess, an infelicity which attended the deceased author 
during life, that he set about everything in a manner different from that 
pursued by other men ; from which cause iew things succeeded with 
him. Many of his acquaintances thought that he affected originality. In 
that they did him injustice. No man was ever more sincere and genuine 
in his singularities ; none, perhaps, had less the appearance of being so. 
No man was more natural, in cases where everybody thought they saw 
design. 

This untoward fate still, in a certain degree, pursues the appearance of 
his Letters. Various circumstances, which cannot be explained here, 
compel us, contrary to all usage, to begin with the last two volumes, 
which the public must accept as the first. Should these meet with ap- 
probation, we hope soon to be able to publish that preceding sequel which 
will he found no less independent than these. For the convenience of 
the reader, we have annexed a short table of contents, as well as occa- 
sional notes, ad modum Minellii ; for which we beg pardon and indul- 
gence. 

B , October 30, 1829. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER I. 

Departure. Madame de Sevigne. Dresden. Homoeopathic disposition. The art of 
travelling comfortably. Reminiscences of youth. Weimar. Grand Duke's library. 
The Court. The park. Dinner at Court. Duke Bernhard. Anecdote. Visit to 
Gothe. A day in the Belvedere. Late Queen of Wurtemberg. Granby. English 
abroad and at home. 1 

LETTER II. 

Gotha. Old friends. Eisenach. The wedding. Hasty flights. The banks of the 
Ruhr. Wesel. Fatherlandish sandbanks. Beautiful gardens of Holland. Foreign 
air of the country. Culture. Utrecht. The cathedral at Gouda. Houses built 
aslant. Fantastic windmills. Rotterdam. The civil banker. Pasteboard roofs. 
The golden gondola. JElna. The lovely girl. L'adieu de Voltaire. 9 

LETTER III. 

The passage. The planter. The English custom-house. The lost purse. Macad- 
amized roads. Improvements of London. Specimens of bad taste. National 
taste. The Regent's Park. Waterloo bridge. London Hotels. The bazaars. 

Walks in the streets. Shops. Dinner at the Ambassador's. Johannisberg. 

Chiswick. Decline of taste in the science of gardening. Favourable climate. The 
menagerie. Life in the City. The universal genius. The exchange and Bank. 
The gold cellar. Court of justice of the Lord Mayor. Garroway's Coffee-house. 
Rothschild. Nero. Exeter 'Change. Wurtemberg diplomacy. Theatre in the 
Strand. The ingenious man. Too much for money. Hampton Court. Danger- 
ous fumigation. 14 

LETTER IV. 

Climate. British Museum. Its guards. Strange Mischmasch. Journey to Newmar- 
ket. English scenery. Life there. The races. The betting-post. Visit in the 
country. English hospitality. The Dandy. Englishmen on the continent. Na- 
tional customs. Order of dinner. Hot-houses. Audley end. The Aviary. Short 
Grove. Sale of Land in England. 23 

LETTER V. 

Advice to travellers. Clubs. Virtue and Umbrellas. Arrangement of Maps. En- 
glish wine. How an Englishman sits. Comfortable customs. Rules of behaviour. 
Treatment of Servants. The higher classes. Rules of play. Pious wishes for 
Germany. Good-breeding of a Viscount. The actor Liston. Madame Vestris. 
'Manger et digerer.' Sentimental effusion. Inconvenient Newspapers. Drury- 

• lane. Braham the everlasting Jew. Miss Paton. Vulgarity of the theatre. Coarse- 
ness of an English audience. 34 

LETTER VI. 
Barrel organs. Punch. His biography. Ruined Houses. The King in Parliament. 
Contrast. George the Fourth. The Opera. Figaro without Singers. English 

melodies. Charles Kemble. Costume of old times. Prince E . A diplomatic 

' bon mot.' Sir L M . Practical Philosophy. Falstaff as he is and as he 

should be. The King in Hamlet. The intelligent actor from Newfoundland. Little 
circle in the great world. How the day passes here. Learning languages. The 
author of Anastasius. His antique furniture. Ob-eron. The chorus of rocks. 

Presentation to the King. Incidents at the levee. Dinner with Mr. R . Real 

piety. His fashionable friends. State carriage of the King of the Birmans. Ma- 
thews at home. 44 

B 



X CONTENTS. 

LETTER VII. 

The auctioneer. The Napoleonist. French theatre. A rout. Lady Charlotte B . 

Politics and conversation. English Aristocracy, The foggy sun of England. Ex- 
traordinary testamentary dispositions. Modern knights of St. John. Sion House. 
Richmond. Adelphi. Admirable drunkard. Alexander Von Humboldt. King of 
Prussia. The Diorama. 58 

LETTER VIII. 

Journey of business. Gothic and Italian villa. Stanmore Priory. English country 
inns. Breakfast. Cashiobury Park. Tasteful magnificence. Drawings by Denou. 
Flower-Gardens. Ashridge. Modern Gothic. Woburn Abbey. 64 

LETTER IX. 

Warwick Castle. Feudal Grandeur. The baronial hall. Portraits. Joan of Arragon. 
Machiavelli. Leamington. Guy's Cliff. His cave. Gaveston's cross. Tombs of 
Warwick and Leicester. The ruins of Kenilworth. Elizabeth's balcony. The past. 
Birmingham. Mr. Thomasson's manufactory. Aston Hall. Cromwell. Chester. 
The town prison. The rogue's fete. 70 

LETTER X. 

Hawkestone Park. Uncommonly beautiful scenery. The red castle and New Zea- 
lander's hut. More manufactories. Dangerous employment. The room in which 
Shakspeare was born. His grave. Various parks. The Judith of Cigoli. Blenheim. 
Vandalism. Pictures. Oxford. Its Gothic aspect. The Sovereigns as Doctors. 
The Museum. Tradescant and his bird Dodo. The blue dung-beetle in the charac- 
ter of a knight. Elizabeth's riding gaiters, and her lover's locks of hair. The library. 
Manuscripts. Stowe. Overloading. Louis the Eighteenth's lime trees. Valuables 
behind a grating. Decoration for Don Juan. Portrait of Shakspeare. Ninon de 
1'Enclos. Balustrade. Christmas pantomimes. 81 

LETTER XL 

Conversational talents of the French. Death of the Duke of York. Adventure at his 
house. English mourning. Excerpts from my journal. Lady Morgan's Salvator 
Rosa. ' What is conscience?' Cosmorama. Skating on the Serpentine. The 

blacking-manufacturer's ' sporting match.' Visit to C Hall. Life there. 

Lord D 's recollections of M . Pictures. The most beautiful woman. The 

Park. 97 

LETTER Xn. 

Brighton. Sunset. Oriental baths. ' Gourmandise' and heroism. Count F . 

Ride on the sea-shore. Almack's ball. English notions of precedence. The 
romantic Scot. Sermon and priests. Duties of a clergy. The windmill. Party 

at Count F 's. Highland Costume, Private balls. Wanderings of the garden 

Odysseus. Innocent politics. 107 

LETTER XIII. 

Beggar's eloquence. Tea-kettle pantomimeand jugglers. Dream Superstition. The 
fancy ball. Miss F . Mrs. F . Remarks on society. ' Nobodies.' Plea- 
sures of a ball. Pictures in the clouds. The French Physician. Amateur Con- 
certs. Chinese feet. Italian Opera. Hyde Park. English horsemanship. 117 

LETTER XIV. 

Technicalities of English Society. ' Bonne chere.' Captain Parry and his ship. The 
Guards' mess. Play. ' Le Moyen age.' Monkeys and Poneys ' Le Grand 
Seigneur dentiste.' Lady Hester Stanhope in Syria. Adam still alive. Tippoo 

Saib's shawl. Homeward flight. Lord Mayor's dinner. Lord II 's and the 

Bankers houses. Inaccessibleness of Englishmen. Persian Charge d'affaires. 
Courtesy of the English princes. Ride in the suburbs. 123 

LETTER XV. 

Correspondence. Lord Mayor's feast. Speeches. Caricatures. Dangers of a fog. 
English society. Middle classes. Critical position of the Aristocracy. Freedom 
of the press. Newspaper extracts. Dinner at Mr. Canning's. Concert. Easy 
manners. Liston. The Areopagus. Rev. R. Taylor. Almack's. Rapid travelling. 



CONTENTS. XI 

Prince Schw . House of Commons ; Messrs. Peel, Brougham, Canning 1 . House 

of Lords ; Duke of Wellington, Lords Goderich, Holland, Lansdowne, Grey. Value 
of a ticket for Almack's. Lady Politicians. Indian Melodrame. Sir Thomas 
Lawrence. Portuguese eyes. Prince Polignac. London season. Duchess of 

Clarence. Countess L 's ball. English horsewomen. Breakfast at the Duke of 

Devonshire's. The new Venus. Crush of Carriages. Dinner at the Duke of 
Clarence's. Fitzclarence family. English-French. Dinner at Mr. R 's. Mar- 
chioness of L . Marquis of L . Bishops' aprons. Concerts of ancient music. 

Ambulating advertisements. Mr. R . Aristocracy in Religion. Dream. 130 

LETTER XVI. 

Mr. Hope's collection of pictures and statues. Toilette-necessaries of a Dandy. 
Ladies' conference. Style of invitations. Duke of Sussex. Major Kepple. Ascot 

races. S Park. The charming fairy and her country-house. Windsor Castle. 

Disaster. Greek boy. British cavalry. Absence of military pedantry. Balls. 
Disenchantments. Horticultural breakfast. Colossal pines. Tyrolese singers. 
Northumberland-house. Sir Gore Ousley. Persian anecdotes. Flower-table. 
Children's balls. Art and nature. Greenwich. Execution. Contrasts. Party 
at the Duchess of Kent's. Marie Louise. King of Rome. Heat. King's-bench 
and Newgate prisons. The unconscious philosopher. Vauxhall. The battle of 

Waterloo. Ball at Lady L 's. Phrenology. Mr. Deville's character of myself. 

Mr. Nash's library. Dinner at the Portuguese Ambassador's. St. Giles's. Ex- 
hibition of English pictures. Pounds and thalers. ' Excerpts'. Gossip. Visions 
of the past. The Tunnel. Astley's Theatre. Parody of the Freischutz. Bedlam. 
The last of the Stuarts. Funerals. Omens. Barclay's brewery. West India 
docks. Amusing charlatanerie. Westminster Abbey by night. Dinner at Sir 

L M 's. Practical Bull. English Opera. New organ. Miss Linwood. 

Solar Microscope. Panoramas. Death of Canning. 'Vivian Grey.' St. James's 
Park. Respect for the public. Propensity to mischief in the people. Exclusive- 
ness of the great. London in autumn. Newspaper facts. 146 

LETTER XVII. 

Descent in a diving-bell. Obliging fire. College of Surgeons. The false mermaid. 
The sagacious ourang-outang. Extraordinary recovery. The living skeleton. 
Fortune. The desperate lover. Salthill. Stoke Park. Diopmore. Windsor 
Castle. Eton. St. Leonard's Hill. Windsor Park. Habits of George the Fourth. 

The giraffe. Virginia Water. Lord and Lady H . Character of Lord Byron. 

Windsor Terrace. St. George's Chapel. Day dreams. English promptitude. 
Military men of England. Frogmore. Anecdote of Canning. Egham races. 
Dwarf trees. Moonlight walk. Respect for the law. 177 

LETTER XVIII. 

What a park should be. Horses. Lady . Hatfield and Burleigh. Doncaster 

Races. Pomp in the country. Duke of Devonshire's equipage. Madame de 
Maintenon. Useless talents. York Minster. Library. Walk in the city. Skeleton 
of a Roman lady. Clifford's Tower. The county jail. Thieves' wardrobe. As- 
cent. Town-hall. Armorial bearings of citizens. Madame de Maintenon. Arch- 
bishop's palace and kitchen-garden. Singular absence of mind. Castle How- 
ard. Pictures. The three Mary's. Painted memoirs. English habits. Bad climate. 
Equine sagacity. Scarborough. The rock-bridge. Light-house on Flambo- 
rough-head. 188 

LETTER XIX. 

Whitby. W r hat is remarkable in a Duke. The ruin. The Museum. Alum mines. 
Lord Mulgrave's castle and park. Singular accident. Fountain's Abbey. Stud- 
ley Park. The Catacombs at Ripon. Harrowgate. The End of the World. The 
old General. At istocratical influence. Harewood park. Kennel. Horses. 
Wooden curtains. Lord Harewood. Leeds. Reform in Parliament. Cloth man- 
ufactory. Templenewsome. Rotherham. Disappointment. Wentworth House. 
Portraits. Sheffield. Knives and scissars. Nottingham. Wild beasts. Lord Mid- 
dleton's seat. St. Albans Abbey. Duke of Gloucester's tomb. Return to London. 200 

LETTER XX. 

Excursion to Brighton. Arundel Castle. Petworth House. Portraits. Hotspur's 
sword. Old 'Whalebone.' The fortunate duchess. ' Pro^nostica.' Continua- 



XII CONTENTS. 

tionofDon Juan. The year 2200. 'Etourderie.' Rules of behaviour. English 
politicians. Charles Kemble's Falstafi*. License of English actors. Young - as 
Hotspur. German and English stage. Wonders of the age. ' Flirtation.' Sin- 
gular ball. Macready's Macbeth. Thoughts on the tragedy of Macbeth. Der 
Freischutz. ' Liaison' with a mouse. Street rnystifiers. ISights in London Visit 
to Woolmers. Ball at Hatfield. Pansanger. Grand Signor. Persian valua- 
bles. 212 

LETTER XXI. 

Billy, the Rat-destroyer. English amusements. The newest Roscius. Fancy. Free- 
will. Original sin. Austrian philosophy. Colours of the days. Friday. Don 
Miguel. American Anecdote. English ' tournure.' Unpleasant Christmas-box. 
Portuguese etiquette. Ludicrous incident in the theatre. English flints. Parties in 

honour of the infant. Baroness F . The charming aid-de-camp. Anecdote 

told by Sir Walter Scott. B Society. Disadvantages of a sandy soil. India 

House. Tippoo Saib's amusements. Shawls. Ride in the Steam-carriage. Ride 
in a carriage drawn by kites. Fox hunt. Clerical fox-hunters. Thoughts on 
death. Recommendation of Blotting-paper. The Atlas of life. Bellows. Advan- 
tages of illness. Instruction. Convalesence. 226 

LETTER XXII. 

The Thelluson will. The Dandy in the back settlements of America. English justice. 
A Chancery suit. Dramatic juggler. Fall of the Brunswick theatre. Party at Mr. 
Peel's. ' Chapeau de Pailie.' Mr. Can's collection of pictures. General Lejeune's 
battle-pieces. The courtier. Mina, Argueiles, and Valdez. On the acting and 
translating of Shakspeare. Kean, Young, and Kemble, in Othello. Character 
oflago. 241 

LETTER XXIII. 

Aristocracy and liberalism united in one person. Fete at the Duchess of 's. 

Wonderful tale of Mr. H . Toads. The menagerie in Regent's Park. Mar- 
shal Beresford. Rural dinner in H Lodge. Zoological Garden. The patient 

witling. Uncomfortable customs. Dinner at H Lodge. Sir Walter Scott; 

his appearance and conversation. A charming girl. Tailors, butchers, and fish- 
mongers. Crockford's. Spring-festival. Rural pleasures. Musical indigestion. 
Strawberry-Hill, the seat of Horace Walpole. German customs in England. 
Epsom races. Soiree at the King's. Historical portraits. Paintings in water- 
colour. The little paradise. The branch from Birnam Wood. Bonneau the Se- 
cond. The Empress Josephine's Fortune-telling book. Introduction to the 
Duchess of Sachsen Meiningen The Pigeon Club. The aquatic theatre. The 
Doomed. The new Ninon de l'Enclos. Another dejcune champetre. The two 
Marshals. 250 

LETTER XXIV. 

A rout ' par excellence.' English squeeze. Visit to Cobham. Lord D 's birthday. 

Mr. Child's speech. Rochester Castle. The most natural camel. The downfall. 
The water party. Return to London. The Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures. 
The nursery-garden. ' Appercu' of English fashionable society. 262 

LETTER XXV. 

Departure from London. Cheltenham. English comfort. Mineral waters. Pro- 
menades. Sources of the Thames. Lackington Hill. The village in the wood. 
Ancient Roman villa. Tea-garden. Avenues. Master of the Ceremonies. Field 
of Tewksbury. Worcester. Cathedral. King John. The Templar. Prince 
Arthur's tomb. Enjoyments of travelling. Picture in the mist. Vale of Llangol- 
len. Churchyard, and view from it. Mountain breakfast. Celebrated ladies. 
Visit to them. Lofty mountains. Comparison with those of Silesia. The road. 
The stone bishop. The indefatigable. Jest and Earnest. German titles. German 
placemen. German nobles. Romances. Feudal opinions. English domestic ar- 
chitecture. Penrhvn Castle. The slate quarry. Operations there. Reflections 
of a pious soul of Sandomir, or Sandomich. Conversions. Missions. Extracts from 
Berlin journals. 272 

LETTER XXVI. 

Bangor. Welsh driving. Lake of Llanberris. Fish-hunting dogs. Storm. Shelter 
in the old castle. Hut, and its inhabitants. Ascent of Snowdon. Mountain poney 



CONTENTS. XI] 1 

and sheep. Veiled summit and my double. Libation. Rocky path. View. Region 
of birds of prey. Return on the lake. Caernarvon Castle. Edward's birth. King's 
stratagem. Origin of the English Motto. Contrast in the ruins. Eagle Tower. 
Sea-bath. Billiard table. Weather and eating. The Hebe of Caernarvon. Extracts 
from the " Lammszeitung." Intolerance of Berlin Saints. Church and King sole 
guides of faith. Duties of rich and poor contrasted. Promenade round Bangor. 
Bath at Bangor. Beaumaris. The castle. Craig y don. JYlenai Straits. Chain 
bridge over the sea. 293 

LETTER XXVII. 

Plague of flies. Project for a Park. Plas Newydd. Cromlechs. Druid's cottage. 
INew kaleidescope. Journey into the interior of the mountains. Unworthy views of 
Providence. Protestant Jesuits. Destinies of man. Cars. Lake of Idwal. Path 
at the foot of the Trivaen. Welsh guide. Wearisome ascent. Rose-coloured light. 
Valley of Rocks. The eagle. " The bad pass." Bog. Capel Cerig. Valley of 
Gwynant. Elysium. Dinas Emris. Merlin's rock. Dangers. Pleasant inn at 
Bedgellert. The blind harper and his blind dog. The Devil's bridge. Tan y 
Bwlch. Beautiful Park. Gigantic dam. Tremadoc. Reminiscences of sand, dirt, 
and father-land. Evening fancies. Crumbs of philosophy. Possessor of Penrhyn 
Castle. Road over Penman Mawr. Conway Castle with fifty two towers- " Con- 
tentment " villa. The Queen's closet. Hooke and his forty-one sons. Gothic mania. 
Truly respectable Englishman. Fashion-hunting. 303 

LETTER XXVIII. 

' Vie de Chateau.' Cathedral at St. Asaph. Tabernacle. 'True faith. Denbigh Castle- 
Meeting of Harpers. Romantic Valley. Pretty Fanny. Her dairy and aviary. 
Paradise of fowls. Ride through romantic country. Short stay at Craig y Don. 
Newspaper article. Irish dinner. Happy condition of the middle classes. Opinions 
on England. The Isle of Anglesca. Paris mines. Copper smelting. New inventions. 
Holyhead. Light-house. Terrific rocks. Sea-birds. Hanging bridge. Stormy 
passage to Ireland. First Impression of the country. Dublin. Exhibition of fruits 
and flowers. Walk in the city. Sight-seeing. Palace of the Lord Lieutenant, and 
modern Gothic chapel. University. My Cicerone. Organ of the Armada. Archi- 
medes' burning glass. Portraits of Swift and Burke. Battle of Navarino. Phoenix 

Park. Characteristics of the people. Lady B . The meaning of " character " 

in England. The Lifly. W Park. Charming entrance. " The Three Rocks." 

Beautiful view. Irish peasant women. Wooden Capuchin. The Dandy. Com- 
fortable arrangements for the English aristocracy. Country visit. First interview 

with Lady M . Unfortunate end of a ride. Further particulars concerning the 

Muse of Ireland. 317 

LETTER XXIX. 

Ride on horseback into the county Wicklow. Bray. Student's equipment. English 
piety. Kilruddery. Glen of the Downs. Summer-house. Vale of Durwan. The 
giant. The Devil's Glen. Killeborn. Rural repast in Rosanna. The tourists. 
Avondale, an Eden by moonlight. Avocalnn. The meeting of the Waters. Castle 
Howard. Beautiful portrait of Mary Stuart. Bally Arthur. The ha-ha. My horse 
at blind-man's buff. Shelton Abbey. The negro porter. Loss of my pocket-book. 
What is a gentleman? Valley of Glenmalure. Lead mines. Military road. The 
sun behind black masses of clouds. The seven churches. Mysterious tower with- 
out an entrance. The black lake of St. Kevin. The giant Fian M'Cumhal. The 
enamoured Princess. Her tragical end, and the saint's excessive rigour. Irish toilet. 
Walter Scott and Moore in the mouth of a peasarrt. Morass and will-o'-the-wisp. 
A night upon straw. Hedge of Mist. First peep of sun over the lake and valley 

ofLuggelaw. Romantic solitude. The statue of rock. P Park. Intolerance, 

cant, and abuse of the Sunday. Sugar-loaf. Rich country. Repose by the brook. 
Lord Byron. 331 

LETTER XXX. 

Donnybrook fair The lovers. Powerscourt. The Dargle and The Lover's Leap. 
The waterfall. Galopade, with the guide behind me. Inn at Bray. Sketch of 

English manners. Grand Duke of S W. . Advantages of a humble mode 

of travelling. Activity of beggars. Kingston. Construction of the harbour. Ma- 
chinery. The Spectre ship. Tasteless and appropriate monument in honour of 
George the Fourth. Fine road to Dublin. Catholic association. English horse- 
riders and admirable clowns. The dance of Polypi. 840 



XIV CONTENTS. 

LETTER XXXI. 

The young parson. Journey with him to the West. Connaught. Singular country. 

Visit at Capt. B 's. Life of a true Irishman. They are not over fastidiuot 

Divine service in Tuam. Service of the Church of England. Galway lace. 
Resemblance of the Irish people to savages. The town of G lway. Want of books 
there. The race. Accident of a rider. Indifference ot the public. The fair African. 
Athenry, a bathing place, like a Polish village. King John's castle. The abbey. 
Popular escort. Whisky. Castle Hackett. The fairy queen. She carries off a 
lover. Splendid sunset. Definition of ' Good temper.' Cong. Irish wit. The 
Pigeon-hole. Subterranean river. Meg Merrilies. Illuminated cavern. Enchanted 
trout. Lough Corrib, with its three hundred and sixty-five islands. The monastery. 
Irish mode of burial. Hearty kindness of the old captain. 345 

LETTER XXXII. 

' Hors d'ceuvre.' German Character. Adventure with a gipsy. How we acquire a 
soul. State of the Irish peasantry. Stupid rage of an Orangeman. Beautiful 
park and disposition of water. Picture gallery at M — B — . St. Peter with a scarlet 
wig, by Rubens. Winter landscape, by Ruisdael. Magnificent Asiatic Jew, by 
Rembrandt. Irish hunters. Departure by the Postman's cart. The obliging Irish- 
man. Desert country. Poverty and light-heartedness of the people. Sure reve- 
lation. "The cross bones." The Punch-bowl. Lord Gort's park. Desire of my 
horse to stay there. Irish posting. Its characteristics. 357 

LETTER XXXIII. 

Limerick. Antique character of that city. Catholics and Protestants. Deputation, 
and offer of the Order of the Liberator. O'Connell's cousin. Cathedral. I am 
taken for a son of Napoleon. I substitute my valet and make my retreat. Conver- 
sation in the stage. The Shannon. Its magnificent size. New sort of industry of a 
beggar in Lisdowel. Twelve rainbows in a day. Killarney. Voyage on the lake in 
a storm. The dandy and the manufacturer. Some danger of drowning. Inisfal. 
len island. O'Donaghue's white horse. His history and apparition. The old boat, 
man and his adventure. Journal dcs Modes of the infernal regions. Mucruss Abbey. 
The large yew-tree. Influence of the Catholic priests. O'Sullivan's waterfall. Young 
Sontag. The wager. Ross Castle. Two Englishmen ' de trop ' Bad taste of quiz- 
zing. The Knight of the Gap. The " madman's rock." Brandon Castle. A bugle- 
man. The eagle's nest. Coleman's leap. The dinner. Fresh salmon boiled on 
arbutus sticks. Voyage back. Melancholy thoughts. Christening with whisky. Julia 
Island. Journey to Kenmare. Shillelah battle. Ride to Glengariff by night. Ex 
traordinary road. The intelligent poney. Beautiful bay of Glengariff. Colonel 

W 's park a model. Family of the possessor. Lord B 's hunting seat. Bad 

weather. Rocks, storm and apparition of 367 

LETTER XXXIV. 

Kenmare. Irish messenger. Road to Derrinane. Bridge of the black water. Chaos. 
Terrific coast. Perplexities. Aid from a smuggler. Mountain pass at night. 
Derrinane Abbey. O'Connell the great Agitator; Father L'Estrange his confessor. 
O'Connell as chieftain giving laws to his subjects. His intolerance in matters of 
religion. Departure from Derrinane. Danish forts. Leave-taking. Iiish modes of 
conveyance. Amiable character of the lower Irish. Example of it. Sorrows of 
Werther. Opinion of it. Faust. The Innkeeper's daughter at Kenmare. Hungry 
Hill and its majestic waterfall. O'Rourke's eagle. The modern Ganvmede. Seals 
under my window. Their love for music. English family worship. Theological 
discussion on the deluge, the day of judgment, and the Apocalypse. Extraordinary 
beauties and advantages of this spot. 380 

LETTER XXXV. 

Wild honeycomb. Egyptian lotus. Visit to an eagle's nest; their romantic dwell- 
ing, and wonderful instinct. The wild huntsman of the South of Ireland. The 
caves of the Sugar Loaf. Track of the fairy queen's carriage wheels. Dangerous 
hunting in these mountains. The fogs, bogs, and wild bulls. Mariner of taming 
one. 393 

LETTER XXXVI. 
Idolatry of Sunday in England. Wonderful conversion of a Protestant to Catholic- 
ism. Riding in a car. The Whiteboys. Macroom. The naive mamma and the 



CONTENTS. XV 

spoiled child in the gingle. The strong king of the Danes. Cork. Voyage to 
Cove: beautiful entrance from the sea. Folko's sea castle. Monkstown. Re- 
markable appearance of two perfect rainbows at once. The amphitheatre of 
the town of Cove. Disappointed expectation of fish. Illuminated night-scene. 
The stars. Departure in the Mail. Mitchelstown and Castle. Materials for novels. 

Lord K . Extraordinary weather for Ireland. The soldier of O'Connell's 

Militia. The Galtees. Cahir. Another of King John's castles. Lord Glengall's 
beautiful park. The Prince's equipage at Cashel. Force of habit. Secret of all 
educations. Club dinner. 39j 

LETTER XXXVII. 

The rock of Cashel. One of the most curious ruins in Iceland. The Devil's Bile. 
Old Saxon architecture. Bell of the Inquisition. The statue of St. Patrick, and 

throne at Scone. Hore and Athassil abbeys. Lord L . Condition of the 

Catholics in Tipperary. Church of Ireland. Laughable article in the newspaper 
concerning myself. My speech. 404 

LETTER XXXVIII. 

The swan. Holy Cross and its monuments. Irish Catholic clergy. Dinner with 
eighteen clergymen. Conversation at it. Comparison of the Wendish and the 
Irish. List of the Catholic and Protestant parishes in Cashel. Curious details 
and remarks upon them. Well-meant exorcism. Irish breakfast. Breakneck hunt. 
The wandering bog. Feats of horses. Country gentleman's life. The Castle in 
the air. Potheen enthusiasm. Irish gentry. Lord H . 408 

LETTER XXXIX. 

The brothers. Animal life. Devils. The pretty hostess. The piper. The robbers. 
The lawyer cheated. The murder of Baker. The motionless cock. Fitzpatrick 
and his bag-pipe. 415 

LETTER XL. 

Killough Hill. The fairy garden. Romantic sentry-box. Return to Dublin. Ma- 
dame de Sevigne. Lord Byron's tempest. Dinner with the Lord Lieutenant. 
The Marquis of Anglesea. Catholic worship. Invisible music. St. Christopher. 
Comparison of the Catholic and Protestant divine service. Allegory. Journal 
of a London life. Difference between English and German modes of thinking. 
Remarks on English Women Malahide. Furniture seven hundred years old. 
Duchess of Portsmouth. Charles the First at the court of Spain. Howth Castle. 
Ducrow's living statues. 420 

LETTER XLI. 

Evening at Lady M 's. Her neices. Curious conversation. More theology. 

The nightingales All the corn of Europe. National scene. Domestic pictures. 
The authoress's boudoir. The miniature Napoleon. The Catholic Association. 
Shiel, Lawless, and others. Artificial resolution. Ride in the mountains. Senti- 
mentality of a dandy. 427 

LETTER XLII. 

B H on modern piety. O'Connel! in a long-tailed wig. The Don Quixote 

and the Dandy of the Association. Acting charades at Lady M 's. ' Love me 

love my dog,' Miss O'Neil. Her acting. 436 

LETTER XLITI. 

Dead-letter office. £3000 incognito. The doctor. New surgcial instrument. The 
bank. Bank-note metal. Gymnastics. Parlour philosophy. Paradoxes. 441 

LETTER XLIV. 

Favour of Neptune. The dream. Voyage across the channel. The young heir. 
Night in the mail. Shrewsbury. The tread-mill. Yellow criminals. Church. 
Curious old houses. Street curiosity. The little scholar. Ross. The river Wye. 
Goderich Castle. Varied prospects. Three counties at once. Childhood of 
Henry the Fifth. Giotesque rocks. Unfortunate tourist. The Druid's Head. 
Monmouth. Birth-place of Henry the Fifth. A poultry-yard. The bookseller 
and his family. Theft. Kind, simple-hearted people, i'intern abbey. The ivy 
avenue. The Wind Cliff. Sublime view. Chepstow Castle. Cromwell and 
Henry the Eighth improvers of the picturesque. Discovery. Penitence. 451 



XVI CONTENTS. 

LETTER XLV. 

Chepstow. Marten the Regicide. The girl's explanation. Taxes imposed by English 
lords and gentlemen on travellers. The possessor of Piercefield. Crossing the 
Bristol Channel. Men and horses pele nicle. Recapitulation. Natural pictures. 
The most beautiful building. Bristol. The feudal churches. Disinterested piety 
of English clergymen. The mayor's equipage. Cook's Folly. Lord de Clifford's 
park. Russian fleet. The model of a village. Clifton. The black and while 
house. Sensibility of surgeons, Bath. The king of Bath. The Abbey church. 
Singular decoration. King James the Second's heroic feat. The eccentric Beckford. 
The tower. Strange cortege. The visit over the wall. Gothic architecture. 
Christmas-eve market. Walks by day and night. The conflagration. 460 

LETTER XLVI. 

The widow. Love of the English for horrors. More agreeable travelling companion. 
Examinations, and learned examiners. Stonchenge. Sinister meeting and acci- 
dent. Salisbury Cathedral. Monuments. The spire. Frightful ascent. The 
hawk on the cross, and the bishop's pigeons. His Lordship's functions. Pious 
wish for my Country. Mirror of the past and future. Wilton castle. The Chate- 
laine anticpies. Pictures. Temple built by Holbein. Talent and taste of English 
ladies. Entrance by stratagem. Langford park. Fine pictures. Egmont. Al- 
ba. Orange, Emperor Rudolph's throne. Boxing-match, the betting coach- 
man. Modern English aristocratic morality. March of intellect. Military school. 
Fox-chace. National duty. The new year. London. Canterbury cathedral. 
The Black Prince. Splendour of colouring. The archbishop. The damaged 
boiler. Dover fortress. Short passage. The air of France. The jetty. English 
children. Unequal contest between a French bonne and a resolute little English 
girl. The chief and father of dandies. Anecdotes. 469 

LETTER XLVII. 

French diligence. The conducteur. An old soldier of Napoleon's garde. German 
Plinzen. La ' mechanique.' Value of freedom. Paris. Revision of the old ac- 
quaintance. Bad new one. Theatre de Madame Leontine Fay. Virtuous Uncle 
Martin. ' La charte pour les cafes.' Rosini the tamer of wild beasts. Cheapness 
of Paris. Burlesque exhibition of the death of Prince Poniatowski. Praiseworthy 
* ensemble 1 of French acting. Gleanings in the Louvre. The sphinx out of place. 
The Mephistophiles Waltz. Heaven and Hell. 479 

LETTER XLVin. 

Ascetic walk. Anecdotes of the Buonaparte family. Spanish courtesy. Theatre 
Francais. Omnibus. Thoughts in a Dame Blanche. II Diavolo. Singers. Agri- 
mens of Paris. La Morne. Polar bear. Desaix's monument. Disappointed hope. 
The Jimas. Departure. 490 



"**■* 



LETTERS 

ON 

ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 



LETTER I. 

Dresden, Sept. 8th, 1826. 
My dear friend, 

The love you showed me at our parting in B made me so happy 

and so miserable, that I cannot yet recover from it. Your sad image is ever 
before me ; I still read deep sorrow in your looks and in your tears, and 
my own heart tells me too well what yours suffered. May God grant us a 
meeting as joyful as our parting was sorrowful ! I can now only repeat 
what I have so often told you : that if I felt myself without you, my dearest 
friend, in the world, I could enjoy none of its pleasures without an alloy of 
sadness ; that if you love me, you will therefore above all things watch over 
your health, and amuse yourself as much as you can by varied occupation. 

As I resolved to combat the melancholy which gives so dark a colouring 
to all objects, I sought a kind of aid from your Sevigne, whose connexion 
with her daughter has, in fact many points of resemblance to that which 
subsists between us, only with the exception, • que j'ai plus de votre sang,'* 
than Madame de Grignan had of her mother's. But your resemblance to 
the charming Sevigne is like the hereditary likeness to the portrait of an 
ancestor. The advantages which she possesses over you are those of her 
time and education ; you have others over her ; and what in her appears 
more finished and definite — classic, — in you assumes a romantic character ; 
it becomes richer, and blends with the infinite, — I opened the book at ran- 
dom : it was pleasant enough that I lighted upon this passage — 

" N'aimons jamais, ou n'aimons gueres, 
II est d'angereux d'aimer tant." 

On which she remarks with great feeling, " Pour moi, j'aime encore mieux 
le mal que le remede, et je trouve plus doux d'avoir de la peine a quitter 
les gens que j'aime, que de les aimer mediocrement." 

It is a real consolation to me to have already written a few lines to you : 
since I have conversed with you, I feel as if I were nearer to you. I have 
no adventures to relate as yet. I was so entirely engrossed by my own 
thoughts and feelings, that I scarcely knew through what places my road lay. 

Dresden appeared to me less cheerful than usual, and I was thankful 
when I found myself quietly established in my room at the inn. 

The storm which blew in my face during the whole day, has heated and 
fatigued me ; and as I am, you know, otherwise unwell, I want rest. 

Heaven send you also a tranquil night, and affectionate dreams of your 
friend ! 

• The words or sentences in single inverted commas are those which occur in the 
original in any language other than German. — Trans. 

1 



2 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Sept. 1 Oth . — Mo ming. 

1 Vous avez sans doute cuit toutes sortes de bouillons amers, ainsi que 
moi.' Nevertheless I rose in better health and spirits than yesterday, and 
immediately set to work making all the little arrangements necessary at the 
beginning of a long journey. In the evening I felt extremely depressed, 
and as I dreaded an attack of my nervous hypochondriacal disorder, which 
you christened my ' maladie imaginaire,' I sent for Hofrath (Court-counsel- 
lor) W , the favourite physician of the strangers who pass through 

Dresden, because, independently of his skill, he is an amusing and merry 
companion. You know the use I make of physicians. Nobody can be 
of a more homoeopathic nature than I am ; for the mere conversing with a 
medical man on my complaint and its remedies, generally half cures me ; 
and if I take any of his prescriptions, it is only in thousandth parts. This 

was the case to-day ; and after some hours, which W passed by my 

bedside, and seasoned with many a piquant anecdote, I supped with better 
appetite, and slept tolerably till morning. On opening my eyes, they 

lighted on a letter from you, which the honest B ■ had laid upon my 

bed, well knowing that I could not begin the day so joyfully. Indeed, 
after the pleasure of hearing from you, I have only one other — that of writ- 
ing to you. 

Do but continue thus unrestrainedly to give utterance to all your feelings, 
and fear not to wound mine. I well know that your letters must long re- 
semble a sad and dreary landscape. I shall be tranquil, if I do but see an 
occasional gleam of sunlight throw its rays across it. 

Leipsig, Sept. llth. 

In a very pretty room, with well waxed parquet, elegant furniture, and 
silken curtains, all in their first ' fraicheur,' the waiter is now laying the 
table for my dinner, while I employ these few minutes in writing to you. 

I left Dresden at ten o'clock this morning, in tolerably good spirits, — that 
is, painting fancy pictures for the future. But my lingering regrets at leav- 
ing you, dear Julia, and the comparison of my insipid and joyless solitude 
with the exquisite pleasure I should have had in taking this journey under 
more happy circumstances, with you, fell heavily upon my heart. 

Of the road hither, there is not much to be said; it is not romantic, — 
not even the vineyards, which extend to Meissen, and which present to the 
eye more sand than verdure. Yet the country, though too open, sometimes 
excites reeable feelings by its freshness and fertility : this is the case at 
Oschati where the pretty bushy Culmberg looks down upon the plain, 
like the rich-locked head of youth. The ' chaussee' is good, and it ap- 
pears that the post is improving even in Saxony, since the excellent Nagler 
created a new post-era in Prussia. Nothing amuses me more than the ener- 
getic zeal with which B drives on the willing as well as the phlegmatic : 

he behaves to them as if he had already made the tour of the globe with me, 
and had — of course — found things better everywhere than at home. 

In the delicate state of my health, the comfortable English carriage is a 
real blessing. I rather hug myself on understanding the art of travelling 
better than my neighbours; particularly as far as the maximizing of com- 
fort is concerned: in this I include the taking the greatest possible number 
of things (often dear, accustomed memorials) with the least possible ' em- 
barras' and loss of time, — a problem which I have now perfectly solved. 
In Dresden, before I packed up, you would have taken my room for a bro- 
ker's shop. Now all my wares have vanished in the numerous receptacles 
of the carriage : yet without giving it that heavy, overloaded look, at which 
our postilions so readily take fright ; and which marks a man, to the die- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. J 

criminating eye of innkeepers, as one embarked on the grand tour. Every 
article is at hand, and yet perfectly distinct, so that when I reach my 
nightly quarters, my domestic relations are quickly re-established in a 
strange place. On the road, the transparent crystal windows of the largest 
dimensions obstructed by no luggage or coach-box, afford me as free a view 
of the country as an open ' caleche,' while they leave me lord of the tem- 
perature. 

The men on their lofty seat behind overlook the luggage and the horses, 
without the power of casting curious glances into the interior, or of listen- 
ing to the conversation which may be passing there ; if, perchance, on our 
arrival in the country of the Lilliputs or the Brobdignags, secrets of state 
should come under discussion. I could deliver a course of lectures on this 
subject, — one by no means unimportant to travellers ; but I have been thus 
diffuse here only for the sake of furnishing you with a complete picture of 
myself as you are to think of me, wandering over the face of the earth, 
while my nomadic dwelling and ths ever changing post-horses daily bear 
me further from your sight. 

The host of the Hotel de Saxe, unquestionably one of the best inns in 
Germany, is an old acquaintance of mine, and established many strong 
claims on my gratitude when I was a student at Leipsig. Many a joyous 
and sometimes rather riotous repast was given tit his house ; and I now in- 
vited him to partake of my solitary one, that he might talk to me of the 
past, and of the wild days of my youth. The present times are, alas! be- 
come more serious everywhere. Formerly, pleasure was almost raised into 
a business, — men thought of nothing else — studied nothing else ; and feet, 
so ready to dance, were lightly set in motion. Now-a-days, people find 
their pleasure only in business, and stronger excitements are required to 
make us merry — if that ever be the end proposed. 

JFeimar, Sept. 13//t. — Evening. 

I will not weary you with any ' tirades' on the battle-fields of Leipsig 
and Liitzen, nor with a description of the ' chetif monument to Gustavus 
Adolphus, or of the meagre beauties of the environs of Schulpforte. In 
Weissenfels, where I wanted to buy a book, I was surprised to learn that 
not a bookseller was to be found in the residence of the great Midlner. 
They were most likely afraid that he would saddle them with a law-suit, at 
first hand. 

I trod the plains of Jena and Auerstadt with just such feelings asu 1 French- 
man of the ' grande armee' might have had in the years 1806 and %#J> when 
he marched across the field of Rossbach ; — for the last victorjb'like the 
last laugh, is always the best. And as the seat of the Muses, tire cheerful 
Weimar, received me in its bosom after all these battle reminiscences, I 
blessed the noble prince who has here erected a monument of peace ; and 
has helped to light up a beacon in the domain of literature, which has so 
long illumined Germany with its many-coloured flames. 

Next day I presented myself to this my old commander, and to the rest 
of the illustrious family, whom I found little altered. The Court had, how- 
ever, received the agreeable addition of two amiable princesses, who, had 
they been born in the humblest sphere, would have been distinguished for 
their external charms and their admirable education. A stranger is received 
here with a politeness and attention now completely out of fashion in other 
places. Scarcely was I announced, when a ' laquais de cour,' waited upon 
me to place himself and a court equipage at my disposal during the time of 
my stay, and to give me a general invitation to the Grand Duke's table. 

In the morning, the Grand Duke had the kindness to show me his pri- 



4 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

vate library, which is elegantly arranged, and rema.kably rich in splendid 
English engravings. He laughed heartily when I told him that I had lately 
read in a Paris journal that Schiller had been disinterred by his order, and 
that the skeleton of the illustrious poet was to be placed in the Grand Ducal 
library. The truth is, that his bust, with some others, decorates the room, 
but that his skull, if I was rightly informed, is enclosed in the pedestal; — 
certainly a somewhat singular token of respect. 

I visited the park with renewed pleasure. The ground is not, indeed, 
rich in picturesque beauty, but the laying out is so skilful, the several parts 
are so well imagined and executed, that they leave on the mind a feeling of 
satisfaction which such combinations, even under more favourable natural 
circumstances, seldom produce in an equal degree. 

Among the new improvements I found a small botanic garden, laid out in 
a circular plot of ground, in the centre of which stands a majestic old tree. 
The garden is arranged according to the Linnaean system, and exhibits a 
single specimen of every tree, shrub, and plant which will stand abroad, 
and is to be found in the park and gardens. It is impossible to conceive a 
more agreeable spot for the living study of botany than the seat under this 
tree, which, like a venerable patriarch, looks down upon the surrounding 
youthful generations of every form, foliage, blossom, and colour. Continu- 
ing my walk. I saw a model farm of the Grand Duke's, where gigantic 
Swiss cows give little milk, — for transplantations of this sort seldom an- 
swer. Further on, I found the pretty pheasantry, which is rich in gold and 
silver pheasants and white roes. The great ladder on which from seventy 
to eighty heavy turkeys are drilled by the gamekeeper to climb in company 
is curious enough ; and the old lime-tree, completely loaded with such fruit, 
has a strange exotic aspect. 

As the Court dines at a very early hour, I had scarcely time to put myself 
into costume, and arriving late found a large company already assembled. 
Among them I remarked several Englishmen, who very wisely study Ger- 
man here, instead of first learning, with great trouble, the ungraceful dialect 
of Dresden : they are most hospitably received here. The conversation at 
table was very animated. You know the joviality of the Grand Duke, who 
in this respect completely resembles his friend, the never-to-be-forgotten 
King of Bavaria. We recapitulated many a laughable story of the time when 
I had the honour of being his adjutant; after which I was compelled to ride 
my grand ' cheval de bataille' — my expedition in the air-balloon. 

Much more interesting were Duke Bernard's description of his travels in 
North and South America, which I understand we shall soon have an op- 
portunity of reading in print, with remarks by Gothe. This prince, whom 
the accident of birth has placed in a high station, occupies a still higher as 
man: no one could be better fitted to give the free Americans a favourable 
idea of a German prince than he, uniting, as he does, frank dignity of de- 
portment with genuine liberality of thought, and unpretending kindness and 
courtesy. 

In the evening there was a grand assembly, which, in virtue of its nature 
and quality, was not particularly rich in enjoyment. Every agreeable feel- 
ing however revived within me, when I found myself seated at cards oppo- 
site to the Grand Duchess. Who has not heard of this noble and truly ex- 
cellent German woman, before whose serene and clear spirit Napoleon him- 
self, in the plenitude of his power, stood awed, and who is beloved by every 
one who is permitted to enjoy her gentle and heart-cheering society? We 
sat indeed at the card-table, but gave little heed to the laws of whist; while 
time fled amid animated and delightful conversation. 

In a court like this, visited by so many foreigners, there cannot fail to be 



IRELAND, AND FIIANCE. 5 

originals who afford matter for piquant anecdotes, even those least given to 
scandal. Some very diverting stories were related to me when, on rising 
from table, I mingled again in the crowd. Among other things, a visiting 
card, 'in natura,' was showed to me which apparently owed its existence to 
a well-known anecdote concerning an Englishman. This example suggest- 
ed to the mad-cap Baron J the thought of re-acting the affair with one 

of his table companions, a ci-devant captain, who was tolerably ignorant of 
the world and its usages. With this view, he hinted to the poor man, who 

had been leading a secluded life in D , that politeness required of him to 

make a round of visits in the town ; to which the unsuspecting captain pa- 
tiently replied, that he was not conversant in these matters, but would will- 
ingly put himself under J 's guidance. " Well then," said he, "I will 

provide the cards, which must be written in French, and in three days I will 
call you in my carriage. You must put on your uniform, and your cards 
must express to what service you formerly belonged." All was done ac- 
cording to agreement; but you may imagine what laughing faces greeted our 
visitors, when you learn that the following ' carte de visite' was sent up be- 
fore them in every house : — 

" Le Baron de J , pour presenter/ew Monsieur le Capitaine de M , 

jadis au service de plusieurs membres de la Confederation du Rhin." 

September, 14th. 

This evening I paid my visit to Gothe. He received me in a dimly light- 
ed room, whose ' clair obscure' was arranged with some ' coquetterie' ; and 
truly, the aspect of the beautiful old man, with his Jove-like countenance, 
was most stately. Age has changed, but scarcely enfeebled him : he is per- 
haps somewhat less vivacious than formerly, but so much the more equable 
and mild ; and his conversation is rather pervaded by a sublime serenity, 
than by that dazzling fire which used occasionally to surprise him, even in 
the midst of his highest ' grandezza.' I rejoiced heartily at the good health 
in which I found him, and said with a smile, how happy it made me to find 
our spiritual King in undiminished majesty and vigour. " Oh, you are too 
gracious" said he, (with the yetuneffaced traces of his South German man- 
ner, accompanied by the satirical smile of a North German,*) " to give me 
such a title." " No," replied^ I, truly from my very heart, " not only king, 
but despot, for you have subjugated all Europe." He bowed courteously, 
and questioned me concerning things which related to my former visit to 

Weimar; then expressed himself very kindly with regard to M , and 

my efforts to improve it, gently remarking, how meritorious he ever thought 
it to awaken a sense of beauty, be it of what kind it may, since the Good 
and the Noble unfolded themselves in manifold ways out of the Beautiful. 
Lastly, he gave me some gleam of hope that he might comply with my 
earnest request that he would visit us there. Imagine, dearest, with what 
' empressment' I caught at this, though perhaps but a ' facon de parler.' 

In the course of our conversation we came to Sir Walter Scott. Gothe 
was not very enthusiastic about the Great Unknown. He said he doubted 

* The North Germans are distinguished for energy, activity, acuteness, and high 
mental culture; the South Germans for easy good-nature, simplicity, contented animal 
enjoyment, and greater obsequiousness. In Vienna they call every gentleman Euer 
Gnaden, ' Your Grace,' and he is of course Gnadig, when he is kind or civil. But 
perhaps the author here alludes rather to a certain ceremonious stiffness of the burghers 
of Frankfurt, proud people who give their superiors their due, as they expect it of 
their inferiors.— (Reichsstadtisches Wesen). What is clear is, that he means that the 
inhabitants of the South are not so superior to antiquated distinctions as those of the 
North. The Prussians have been called the French of the North. — Teans. 



6 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

not that he wrote his novels in the* same sort of partnership as existed be- 
tween the old painters and their scholars ; that he furnished the plot, the 
leading thoughts, and skeleton of the scenes, that he then let his pupils fill 
them up, and retouched them at the last. It seemed almost to be his opin- 
ion, that it was not worth the while of a man of Sir Walter Scott's emi- 
nence to give himself up to such a number of minute and tedious details. 
" Had I," added he, " been able to lend myself to the idea of mere gain, I 
could formerly have sent such things anonymously into the world, with the 
aid of Lenz and others — nay, I could still — as would astonish people not a 
little, and make them puzzle their brains to find out the author ; but after all 
they would be but manufactured wares." I afterwards observed, that it was 
gratifying to Germans to see what victories our literature was achieving in 
other countries ; " And," added I, " our Napoleon has no Waterloo to dread." 

" Certainly," replied he, disregarding my ' fade' compliment, " setting 
aside all our original productions, we now stand on a very high step of cul- 
ture, by the adoption and complete appropriation of those of foreign growth. 
Other nations will soon learn German, from the conviction that they may 
thus, to a certain extent, dispense with the learning of all other languages ; 
for of which do we not possess all the most valuable works in admirable 
translations ? — The ancient classics, the master-works of modern Europe, 
the literature of India and other eastern lands, — have not the richness and 
the many-sideclnesst of the German tongue, the sincere, faithful German 
industry, and deep-searching German genius, reproduced them all more per- 
fectly than is the case in any other language ?" 

"France," continued he, "owed much of her former preponderance in 
literature to the circumstance of her being the first to give to the world toler- 
able versions from the Greek and Latin : but how entirely has Germany since 
surpassed her!" 

On the field of politics, he did not appear to me to give into the favourite 
constitutional theories very heartily. I defended my own opinions with 
some warmth. He reverted to his darling idea, which he several times re- 
peated ; — that every man should trouble himself only thus far,-— in his own 
peculiar sphere, be it great or small, to labour on faithfully, honestly, and 
lovingly ; and that thus under no form of government would universal well 
being and felicity long be wanting: — that, for his own part he had followed 
no other course ; and that I had also adopted it in M (as he kindly add- 
ed), untroubled as to what "other interests might demand. I replied frankly, 
but in all humility, that however true and noble this principle were, I must 
yet think that a constitutional form of government was first necessary to call 
it fully into life, since it afforded to every individual the conviction of great- 
er security for his person and property, and consequently gave rise to the 
most cheerful energy, and the most steady trust-worthy patriotism, and that 
a far more solid universal basis would thus be laid for the quiet activity of 
each individual in his own circle : I concluded by adducing, — perhaps un- 
wisely, — England in support of my argument. He immediately replied, 
that the choice of the example was not happy, for that in no country was 
selfishness more omnipotent; that no people were perhaps essentially less 
humane in their political or in their private relations ;£ that salvation came 

* Sir Walter Scott's official declaration, that all the works here alluded to were by 
him alone, was not then made public. — Edit. 

-j- I have striven to preserve the colouring", as well as the substance of Gothe's con- 
versation. To those who have any conception of his merits, it cannot but be interest- 
ing to see, us nearly as possible, the very words which fell from lips so inspired and 
so venerable — Thans. 

$ I cannot help almost suspecting that my departed friend has here put his own 
opinions into the mouth of Gothe. — Edit. 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 7 

not from without, by means of forms of government, but from within, by the 
wise moderation and humble activity of each man in his own circle ; that 
this must ever be the main thing for human felicity, while it was the easiest 
and the simplest to attain. 

He afterwards spoke of Lord Byron with great affection, almost as a father 
would of a son, which was extremely grateful to my enthusiastic feelings 
for this great poet. He contradicted the silly assertion that Manfred was 
only an echo of his Faust. He confessed, however, that it was interesting 
to him to see that Byron had unconsciously employed the same mask of 
Mephistophiles as he himself had used, although, indeed, Byron had pro- 
duced a totally different effect with it. He extremely regretted that he had 
never become personally acquainted with Lord Byron, and severely and 
justly reproached the English nation for having judged their illustrious coun- 
tryman so pettily, and understood him so ill. But, on this subject, Gbthe 
has spoken so satisfactorily and so beautifully in print, that I can add no- 
thing to it. I mentioned the representation of Faust in a private theatre at 
Berlin, with music by Prince Radzivil, and spoke with admiration of the 
powerful effect of some part of the performance. — " Well," said Go the 
gravely, " it is a strange undertaking; but all endeavours and experiments 
are to be honoured." 

I am angry with my vile memory that I cannot now recollect more of our 
conversation, which was very animated. With sentiments of the highest 
veneration and love, I took my leave of the great man, — the third in the great 
triumvirate with Homer and Shakspeare, : — whose name will beam with im- 
mortal glory as long as the German tongue endures ; and had I had anything 
of Mephistophiles in me, I should certainly have exclaimed on the step of 
his door, ' 

" Est ist doch schon von einem grossen Herrn 
Mit einem armen Teufel so human zu sprechen."* 

I was invited to dine with the Grand Duke to-day at the Belvedere, and at 
two o'clock set out on the pleasant road thither. Ever since I have been 
here the weather has been wonderful : — days of crystal, as your Sevigne 
says, in which one feels neither heat nor cold, and which only spring and 
autumn can give. 

The Hereditary Grand Duke and his wife live at Belvedere quite like 
private people, and receive their guests without etiquette, though with the 
most perfect politeness. The Grand Princess (Grossfiirstin) appeared still 
much depressed in consequence of the Emperor's death, but when the 
conversation grew animated, she gave us a very affecting description of the 
floods at St. Petersburg, of which she had been an eyewitness. I have al- 
ways admired the excellent education and the various attainments which 
distinguish the Russian princesses. The late Queen of Wurtemberg was 
even learned. I had once to deliver a letter to her in Frankfurt, and remained 
by her desire standing in the circle after I had given it to her, till the other 
persons of whom it was composed were dismissed. A professor of a Pes- 
tallozian school was the first in turn, and appeared to know less about his 
system than the Queen, then Grand Princess (Grossfiirstin) Katharine, who 
several times corrected his diffuse and inaccurate answers with singular 

* I do not think that the exalted old man will be offended at the publication of this 
conversation. Every word — even the most insignificant — which has fallen from his 
mouth, is a precious gift to many. And even should my departed friend in any respect 
have misunderstood him, or have reported him inaccurately, nothing has been here 
retained, which, in my opinion, can be called an indiscretion. — Edit. 



8 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

acutenoss. A 'diplomate' followed, and he also, in his sphere, received the 
most dextrous and well-turned replies. She next entered into a scientific 

discussion with a celebrated economist from A ; and lastly, profound 

and brilliant reflections, in a lively controversy with a well-known philoso- 
pher, closed this remarkable audience. 

After dinner, the Hereditary Grand Duke took us into his conservatories, 
which, next to Schonbrunn, are the richest in Germany. You know, dear 
Julia, that I lay little stress on mere rarity, and, in plants, as in other 
things, delight only in the beautiful. Many treasures were therefore thrown 
away upon me ; and I could not share in the raptures into which several 
connoisseurs fell at the sight of a stalk, which was indeed only six inches 
high, and had not above five leaves, and no flowers, but, on the other hand, 
had cost sixty guineas, and is as yet the solitary specimen of its kind in 
Germany. I was, however, greatly delighted by a Cactus grandiflorus in 
full flower, and many other splendid plants. I looked with great reverence 
at a magnificent large Bread-fruit tree, and pleased myself with dyeing my 
fingers crimson from the cochineal insects which inhabited a Cactus. The 
varieties of plants exceed sixty thousand. The orangery is beautiful, and 
contains a veteran with a trunk of an ell and a half in circumference, which 
has safely weathered five hundred and fifty northern summers-. 

I spent the evening at Herr V. G 'a, a clever man, and an old friend 

of Madame Schoppenhauer, who is also a kind patroness of mine. Frau 

V. G e came in afterwards, and was a very agreeable addition to our 

company. She is a lively, original, and clever woman, on whom the in- 
tense strewed upon her with so much justice by her father-in-law, has not 
been entirely without its influence. She evinced great pleasure at the arri- 
val of a first copy of Granby, which she had just received from the author, 
who had studied German in Weimar. The offering did not strike me as 
anything very considerable ; and I told her I could only wish the author 
might be more interesting than his work. Perhaps I said this from ' depit,' 
for here, as all over the Continent, it is the fashion to flatter the English in- 
ordinately, and God knows how ' mal a propos.' 

September 16th. 

After taking my leave this morning of all the illustrious family, I devoted 
the rest of the day to my friend Sp , who, together with his family, af- 
fords a proof that a life at court and in the great world is perfectly compati- 
ble with the simplest domestic habits and the most attaching kindness of 
heart. A young Englishman, secretary to Mr. Canning, who spoke Ger- 
man like a native, entertained us with some humorous descriptions of En- 
glish society, and was exceedingly bitter upon the discourtesy and want of 
good-nature which characterize it. This gave him, at the same time, a 
good opportunity of saying handsome things of the Germans, particularly 
those present. It is only while they are abroad that Englishmen judge 
thus : when they return, they quickly resume their accustomed coldness 
and haughty indifference, treat a foreigner as an inferior being, and laugh at 
the German ' bonhommie,' which they praised as long as they were the ob- 
jects of it ; while they regard the truly laughable veneration which we che- 
rish for the very name of Englishman, as the rightful tribute to their supe- 
riority. 

This is the last letter, dear Julia, which you will receive from hence. 

Early in the morning, — not at cock-crow, that is, but according to my 
calendar, — at about twelve o'clock, — I intend to set out, and not to stop till 
I reach London. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 9 

Take care of your health, I beseech you, for my sake, and tranquillize 
your mind as much as you can by the aid of that wondrous self-controling 
strength with which the Creator has endowed it. Love me nevertheless — 
for my strength is in your love. 

Your faithful L . 



LETTER II. 

Wesel, Sept. 20th, 182fr. 
Beloved friend, 

After taking leave of Gbthe and his family, and paying a last visit to a 
distinguished and charming artist in her ' atelier,' I quitted the German 
Athens, stored with pleasant recollections. 

I staid only just so long in Gotha as was necessary to visit an old friend 
and comrade, the minister and astronomer (heaven and earth in strange con- 
junction) Baron Von L . I found him still suffering from the conse- 
quences of his unfortunate duel in Paris, but bearing this calamity with the 
calmness of a sage, which he has displayed in every circumstance of his life. 

It was dark when I reached Eisenach, where I had a message to deliver 
to another old comrade from the Grand Duke. I saw his house brilliantly 
lighted up, heard the music of the dance, and was ushered into the midst 
of a large company, who looked astonished at my travelling costume. It 
was the wedding-day of my friend's daughter, and heartily did he welcome 
me as soon as he recognized me. I apologized to the bride for my unbridal 
garments, drank a glass of iced punch to her health, another to that of 'her 
father, danced a Polonaise, and disappeared, ' a la Franchise.' Very short- 
ly afterwards I made my night toilet, and laid myself comfortably to rest in 
my carriage. 

When I awoke, I found myself a stage from Cassel, at the very place 
where, ten years ago, we made our strange ' entree,' with the pole of our 
carriage standing erect, and the postilion apparently mounted upon it. I 
breakfasted here, and thought over many circumstances of that journey; 
drove through the pretty, melancholy little capital without stopping; then 
through a noble beech wood, which gleamed in the sunshine with a gold- 
green lustre ; made romantic observations on a curious hill covered with the 
moss-grown ruins ; and hurrying on through this monotonous district, reach- 
ed the ancient see of Osnabruck at dinner-time. 

One always sleeps better in a carriage the second night than the first; the 
motion acts upon one like that of a cradle upon children. I felt well and 
in good spirits next morning, and remarked that the whole face of the coun- 
try began to assume a Dutch character. Antique houses, with numerous 
gables and windows ; an unintelligible Piatt Deutsch, which nowise yields 
in harmony to the Dutch; a more phlegmatic people; better furnished 
rooms, though still without Dutch cleanliness ; tea instead of coffee ; excel- 
lent fresh butter and cream ; increased extortions of innkeepers ; — all pre- 
sented a new shade of this many-coloured world. 

The country through which my road lay had a more agreeable and softer 
character, especially at Stehlen on the Ruhr, a place made for a man who 
wishes to retire from the tumult of the world to cheerful seclusion. I could 
not gaze my fill on the fresh succulent vegetation, the magnificent oak and 
beech woods which crowned the hills on the right and left, sometimes grow- 
ing down to the very road, sometimes going off into the distance ; every- 
where skirting the most fruitful fields, shaded with red and brown where 

2 



10 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

they had been newly ploughed, clothed in deep or tender green where they 
were covered by the young winter crops or the fresh clover. Every village 
is surrounded by a belt of beautiful trees, and nothing can exceed the lux- 
uriance of tbe meadows through which the Ruhr winds in fantastic mean- 
derings. Towards evening, as I was comparing this smiling landscape with 
our gloomy pine forests, a tongue of homelike land suddenly appeared as 
if by enchantment, with its sand, shingle, and arid stunted birch-trees, 
stretching across the road as far as the eye could reach. In ten minutes the 
green meadows and proud beeches greeted us again. What revolution was 
it that threw this tract of sand here I 

A few miles from Wesel, however, the whole country becomes ' tout de 
bon' fatherlandish, and, as the ' chaussee' ends here, one wades once more 
through Berlin loose sand. I arrived unfortunately a day too late to sail 
from hence by the steamboat, otherwise I might have reached London from 
Weimar in four days and a half. Now I must travel by land to Rotter- 
dam, and there wait the departure of the first vessel. 

Rotterdam, Sept. 25///. 

My journey from Wesel to Arnheim Avas tedious enough. The horses 
toiled slowly on, through a dull country, amid endless sands. There was 
nothing interesting to be seen but the great brick-kilns by the roadside, 
which I looked at attentively on account of their superiority to ours. The 
more agreeable, and really magical in its effect, is the contrast of the exten- 
sive garden which lies between Arnheim and Rotterdam. On a ' chaussee' 
constructed of clinkers, (very hard-baked tiles,) and covered with a surface 
of fine sand — a road which nothing can excel, and which never takes the 
slightest trace of a rut — the carriage rolled on with that soft unvarying mur- 
mur of the wheels so inviting to the play of the fancy. 

Although there is neither rock nor mountain in the endless park I tra- 
versed, yet the lofty dams along which the road sometimes runs, the mul- 
titude of country-seats, buildings and churches grouped into masses, and the 
many colossal clumps of trees rising from meadows and plains, or on the 
banks of clear lakes, gave to the landscape as much diversity of surface as 
of picturesque objects of the most varied character; indeed its greatest pecu- 
liarity consists in this rapid succession of objects which incessantly attract 
the attention. Towns, villages, country-seats, surrounded by their rich en- 
closures; villas of every style of architecture, with the prettiest flower-gar- 
dens ; interminable grassy plains, with thousands of grazing cattle ; lakes 
which have gradually grown merely from turf-digging to an extent of twenty 
miles; countless islands, where the long reed, carefully cultivated for thatch, 
serves as a dwelling-place for myriads of water-birds; — all join in a glad- 
some dance, through which one is borne along as if by winged horses ; while 
still new palaces and other towns appear in the horizon, and the towers of 
their high Gothic churches melt into the clouds in the misty distance. 

And even in the near-ground the continually changing and often grotesque 
figures leave no room for monotony. Now it is a strange carriage, deco- 
rated with carved work and gilding, without a pole, and driven by a coach- 
man in a blue jacket, short black breeches, black stockings, and shoes with 
enormous silver buckles, who sits perched on a narrow board ; or women 
walking under the load of gold or silver ear-rings six inches long, and Chi- 
nese hats like roofs upon their heads: then yew-trees cut into dragons and 
all sorts of fabulous monsters; or lime-trees with trunks painted white, or 
many-coloured; chimneys decorated in an Oriental style, with numbers of 
little towers or pinnacles ; houses built slanting for the nonce ; gardens with 
marble statues as large as life, in the dress of the old French Court, peeping 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. H 

through the bushes; or a number of brass bottles or cans, polished like mir- 
rors, standing on the grass by the roadside, glittering like pure gold, yet 
destined to the humble purpose of receiving the milk with which the lads 
and lasses are busily filling them. In short, a multitude of strange, unwont- 
ed and fantastic objects every moment present to the eye a fresh scene, and 
stamp the whole with a perfectly foreign character. Imagine such pictures 
set in the golden frame of the brightest sunshine, adorned with the richest 
vegetation, from giant oaks, elms, ashes and beeches, to the rarest hot-house 
plant, and you will have a tolerably perfect and by no means exaggerated 
idea of this magnificent part of Holland, and of the high enjoyment of my 
day's ride. 

There was only a part of it which, as to vegetation and variety, formed 
an exception ; but in another point of view was, if not so pleasant, equally 
interesting. Between Arnheim and Utrecht you come upon a tract, four 
miles long,* of the sand of the Luneberg heath, as bad as the worst plains 
of the Mark ; nevertheless — such is the power of intelligent cultivation — 
the finest plantations of oak, white and red beech, birch, poplar, &c, flour- 
ish by the side of the stunted thorns and heather, which are the only natu- 
ral productions of the soil. Where the ground has too little strength to grow 
trees, it is planted with brushwood, which is lopped every five or six years. 
The magnificent road is skirted the whole way on each side with rows of 
well-kept flourishing trees ; and to my surprise I found that, spite of the 
arid sand, oaks and beeches seemed to thrive better than birches and pop- 
lars. A number of the exquisitely neat Dutch houses and villas were built 
in the midst of the dreary heath : many were only begun, as well as the 
laying-out of pleasure-grounds around them. I could not understand how 
people could have pitched upon this inhospitable soil upon which to found 
expensive establishments : but learned that the Government had been wise 
enough to grant out the whole of this hitherto unprofitable tract of land to 
the neighbouring proprietors and other opulent persons, free of all charges 
for fifty years, with the sole condition that they must immediately either 
plant or otherwise cultivate it. Their heirs or successors are to pay a very 
moderate rent. I am persuaded, from what I here saw, that the greater part 
of our hungry heaths might in a century be converted by a similar process, 
and by continued cultivation, into thriving fields and woods, and the whole 
district thus change its character. 

Utrecht is prettily built, and, like all Dutch towns, a model of cleanliness. 
The painted exterior of the houses and their various forms, the narrow 
winding streets, and the old-fashioned ' ensemble,' are much more pleasing 
to my eye than the so-called handsome towns, the streets of which, like 
mathematical figures, invariably intersect at right angles, and the whole 
weary line of each street is to be seen at a glance. The environs are 
charming, the air very healthful, Utrecht being the highest town in Holland, 
and, as I was assured, the society in winter and spring very lively and agree- 
able, as all the wealthiest nobles of the country make it their residence. 
The trade is inconsiderable, and the whole air of the town and its inhabit- 
ants rather aristocratical than commercial. 

From thence I proceeded to Gouda, the cathedral of which place is cele- 
brated for its painted glass. Eighty thousand guldent was lately bidden in 
vain by an Englishman for one of these windows. In execution it is equal 
to a miniature picture, and the splendour of the colours is indescribable ; — 
the gems and pearls in the garments of the priests emulate real ones. 
Another, half of which was lately shattered by lightning, was presented to 

* German miles. — Transl. 

I A gulden is twenty-pence. — Transl. 



12 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the church by Philip II. There is a portrait of him in it, dressed in a 
mantle of genuine purple ; not the usual reddish colour, but a lustrous vio- 
let, between the deepest blue and crimson, more beautiful than anything I 
ever saw in glass. A third contains a portrait of the Duke of Alva. All 
the windows are of extraordinary dimensions, and with few exceptions in 
exquisite preservation. They are all of the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- 
ries except one, which was not painted till the seventeenth, and which be- 
trays the decline of the art, both by the inferiority of the colours and of the 
conception and drawing. 

He who has seen Gouda may spare himself the trouble of a journey to 
the leaning tower of Pisa, for here the whole town seems to have been 
built on the same principle. Though the Dutch, who have been on many 
accounts not inappropriately called the Chinese of Europe, might very fair- 
ly be believed capable of preferring so extraordinary a style of architecture, 
yet it is probable that the really alarming aspect of the buildings here is to 
be attributed chiefly to the unsteady boggy soil.* 

Almost all the houses stand with their gable ends to the street, every one 
of which is differently ornamented. In very narrow lanes they almost meet, 
and form a triangle, under which one walks with some solicitude. 

As it was Sunday I found the town extremely lively, though with a quiet 
and decent gaiety. Most of the people stood idle, gazing about. They 
took off their hats very politely as I passed. 

Before you reach Rotterdam you ride through a long series of country- 
houses with flower-gardens, separated from the road on either side by a 
narrow canal. The entrance to each of the houses is over a mighty draw- 
bridge, which contrasts oddly enough with the insignificance of the water, 
over which a good leap would carry you. Just as ' baroque' are the tower- 
like windmills outside the town : they are gilded, and ornamented with the 
wildest carvings, besides which, the walls of many of them are so finely 
covered with thick rushes that at a distance they look like fur ; others re- 
semble the skin of a crocodile ; some are like Chinese pagodas ; but, in 
spite of all this extravagance, the whole group produces a very striking ef- 
fect. Interspersed among them are seen the rising masts of the vessels in 
the harbour, and the great glass roof under which the ships of war are built, 
announcing a maritime and commercial city. 

I soon entered a long street thronged with people, at the end of which a 
high black clock tower, with flaming red figures and hands, served as 
• point de vue ;' and it was a good quarter of an hour before I reached the 
Hotel des Bains, on the quay, where I am now very well and comfortably 
lodged. From my window I look down upon a broad expanse of water, 
and the four steam-vessels, one of which is to convey me the day after to- 
morrow to England. Boats row swiftly to and fro, and the busy crowd 
hurry along the quay, the edge of which is adorned with lofty elms, proba- 
bly cotemporaries of Erasmus. After a little walk under these trees, I ate 
a good dinner, and then added to this ell-long letter, which alas, will cost 
more than it is worth. My health is not entirely as I wish it, though daily 
improving. Perhaps the sea will cure me. 

September 26th. 

The manner of living here approaches to that of England. They rise 
late, dine at 'table d'hote,' at four o'clock, and drink tea in the evening. 

• I remember to have read of a Greek monastery in Wallachia, the four towers of 
which appeared as if they would every moment fall in ; yet this optical deception 
was produced only by the inclination of the windows, and of the friezes which run 
round the towers. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 13 

* Au reste,' there is little amusement or variety for strangers, in this great 
city : there is not even a stationary theatre ; the company from the Hague 
give occasional performances in a miserable house. Everybody seems oc- 
cupied with trade, and finds his recreation after it only in domestic pleasures, 
which are indeed the most appropriate and the best, but in which a travel- 
ler can have no share. I went into the counting-house of a Jewish banker 
to change some English money : notwithstanding the insignificance of the 
sum, he behaved in the most respectful manner, and after carefully counting 
out the money for me, accompanied me to the door himself. I was not a 
little astonished to learn from my ' laquais de place' that this man's fortune 
was estimated at two millions of guilders (gulden). It seems, therefore, 
that wealth has not yet made bankers so haughty and insolent here as at 
other places. I visited the arsenal, which, compared with English estab- 
lishments of the like kind, appeared to me insignificant. Many of the large 
buildings are covered with pasteboard, which is said to be very lasting, and 
looks very well. Square sheets of pasteboard, of an ordinary thickness, are 
dipped several times into a cauldron of boiling tar, till they are thoroughly 
saturated with it : they are then hung up to dry in the sun. They are laid 
on a very flat roof, like sheets of copper, one over another, and nailed to 
planks underneath, which they thus preserve from the wet for many years. 
The officers of the yard assured me that a roof of this kind would last much 
longer than shingle, or than the best tarpauling. I was much interested by 
a very detailed model of a ship of war, which could be entirely taken to 
pieces. It was made for the naval school at Delft, and gives a.perfect illus- 
tration of the instruction they receive. The King's golden barge, or gon- 
dola, though probably not quite equal in magnificence to that of Cleopatra, 
was shown to me with great self-satisfaction by the Dutchmen. It is rot- 
ting away on dry land, being very seldom used. 

The country round Rotterdam is famous for its pretty girls and excellent 
fruit, which (the latter I mean) forms a considerable article of export to 
England. Nowhere are such enormous grapes to be found. I saw some 
exposed to sale in the market, which had the appearance and the size of 
plums. Sauntering idly about, I saw an advertisement of a panorama of 
./Etna, — entered, in the train of a party of ladies, — and alas ! lost my heart. 
The loveliest girl I ever saw, smiled upon me from the foot of the volcano, 
with eyes which must have borrowed their glow from its eternal fires, while 
her lips smiled archly with a bloom equal to that of the oleander at her 
side. The prettiest foot, and most exquisite symmetry of person, — all 
were combined to form an ideal, if not of heavenly, at least of the most se- 
ductive earthly beauty. Was this a Dutch woman? Oh no, a true Sicilian; 
but alas, alas ! only painted. The glances she cast at me from her viny 
bower as I went out, were therefore those of triumphant mockery; for since 
Pygmalion's days are over, there is no hope for me. 

To-morrow, instead of the glowing sun and subterranean heat of Sicily, 
the cold wet sea will be around me ; but I shall not say, with Voltaire, on 
quitting pleasant Holland, 

' Adieu Canards, Canaux, Canailles.' 

I shall not write again till I reach London. I will tell you whether I de- 
termine to make a long stay there, which I shall decide on the spot. ' En 
attendant,' I send you a lithographic print of the steamboat in which I 
sail. A t marks, after the fashion in which the knights of old signed their 
names, the place where I stand, and with a little help from your imagina- 
tion you will see how I wave my handkerchief, and send you a thousand 
affectionate greetings from afar. 

Your faithful L . 



14 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

LETTER III. 

London, Oct. 5th, 1826. 

I have had a most disastrous, passage. A squall, constant sea-sickness, 
forty hours instead of twenty, — and, to crown the whole, striking on a sand- 
bank in the Thames, where we had to lie six hours, till the tide set us afloat 
again ; — such were the disagreeable incidents of our voyage. 

It is ten years since I quitted England ; and I know not whether I saw 
all things before with beautifying eyes, or whether my imagination had un- 
consciously brightened the colouring of the distant picture ; but the views 
on the banks of the Thames appeared to me neither so fresh nor so pictur- 
esque as formerly, though superb groups of trees and cheerful pretty villas 
were frequently in sight. But here, as in North Germany, the lopping of 
the trees often spoils the landscape ; only that the quantity of them in the 
numerous hedges which enclose the fields, ajid the preservation of at least 
the topmost branches, render the effect less melancholy here than in the 
otherwise so beautiful Silesia. 

Among the passengers was an Englishman who had just returned from 

Herrnhut, and had also visited the baths of M . It diverted me highly, 

unknown to him as I was, to hear his opinions of the plantations there. 
How much tastes differ, and how little, therefore, anybofly needs to despair, 
you may conclude from this, — that he expressed the highest admiration for 
that gloomy district, solely on account of the immensity of the ' evergreen 
woods,' as he called the endless monotonous pine-forests, which appear to 
us so insufferable, but which are a rarity in England, where fir-trees are 
carefull}* planted in parks, and commonly thrive but ill. 

An American was extremely incensed at being sea-sick during this trum- 
pery passage, after having crossed the Atlantic to Rotterdam without being 
at all so ; and a planter from Demarara, who was in a continual shiver, com- 
plained even more of the "impolitic" abolition of the slave-trade than of the 
cold. He thought that this measure would speedily bring about the total 
ruin of the colonies ; for, said he, a slave or a native never works unless he 
is forced ; and he does not need to work, because the magnificent country 
and climate afford him food and shelter sufficient. Europeans cannot work 
in the heat, so that nothing remains but the alternative, — colonies with 
slaves, or no colonies ; — that people knew this well enough, but had very 
different ends in view from those which they put forward with such a pa- 
rade of philanthropy. He maintained that the slaves were, even for their 
owners' interest, far better treated than the Irish peasants, — far better than 
he had often seen servants treated in Europe : — an exception might be found 
here and there; but this was not worth considering in a view of the whole 
subject. 

1 tried to turn the conversation from a subject so distressing to every 
friend of humanity, and got him to describe to me the mode of life in Guiana, 
and the majesty of its primeval woods. His descriptions filled me with a 
sort of longing after these wonders of nature, in a country where all is 
nobler, and man alone is baser, than with us. 

The ridiculous element of the voyage was an English lady, who with 
unusual volubility seized every occasion of entering into conversation in 
French. Though no longer in the bloom of youth, she carefully concealed 
this defect even on ship-board, by the most studied toilet. At a late hour in 
the morning, when we all crawled on deck more or less wretched, we found 
her already seated there in an elegant ' negligee.' 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 15 

In the middle of the second night we anchored just below London Bridge, 
the most unfortunate circumstance that can happen to a man. In conse- 
quence of the severity of the Custom-house, he is not permitted to take his 
things on shore before they are inspected ; and the office is not opened till 
ten in the morning. As I did not choose to leave my German servants alone 
With mv carriage and effects, I was compelled to pass the night, almost 
dressed as I was, in a miserable sailors' tavern close to the river. In the 
morning, however, when I was present at the examination, I found that the 
golden key, which rarely fails, had not lost its efficacy here, and saved me 
from long and tedious delays. Even a few dozen French gloves, which lay 
in all innocence open upon my linen, seemed to be rendered invisible ; — no- 
body took any notice of them. 

I hastened as quickly as possible out of the dirty city, swarming like an 
ant-hill, but had half a stage to travel with post-horses before I reached the 
' West end of the town,' where I put up at my old quarters, the Clarendon 
Hotel. My former host, a Swiss, had exchanged England for a yet unknown 
country. His son, however, occupied his place, and received me with all 
that respectful attention which distinguishes English innkeepers, and indeed 
all here who live by the money of others. He very soon rendered me a 
real service; for I had hardly rested an hour before I discovered that, in the 
confusion of the night, I had left a purse with eighty sovereigns in a drawer 
in my bed-room. Monsieur Jaquier, 'qui connoissait le terrain,' shrugged 
his shoulders, but instantly sent off a confidential person to the spot, to re- 
cover the lost purse if possible. The disorder which reigned in the misera- 
ble inn, stood me in good stead. Our messenger found the room uncleared ; 
and to the, perhaps disagreeable, surprise of the people, the purse where I 
left it. 

London is now so utterly dead as to elegance and fashion, that one hardly 
meets an equipage ; and nothing remains of the 'beau monde' but a few am- 
bassadors. The huge city is, at the same time, full of fog and dirt, and the 
macadamized streets are like well-worn roads ; the old pavement has been 
torn up, and replaced by small pieces of granite, the interstices between 
which are filled with gravel ; this renders the riding more easy, and dimi- 
nishes the noise ; but, on the other hand, changes the town into a sort of 
quagmire. Were it not for the admirable ' trottoirs,' people must go on 
stilts, as they do in the Landes near Bourdeaux. Englishwomen of the 
lower classes do indeed wear an iron machine of the kind on their large feet. 

London is, however, extremely improved in the direction of Regent 
Street, Portland Place, and the Regent's Park. Now, for the first time, it 
has the air of a seat of Government (Residenz), and not of an immeasurable 
metropolis of 'shopkeepers,' to use Napoleon's expression. Although poor 
Mr. Nash (an architect who has great influence over the King, and is the 
chief originator of these improvements) has fared so ill at the hands of con- 
noisseurs, — and it cannot be denied that his buildings are a jumble of every 
sort of style, the result of which is rather ' baroque' than original, — yet the 
country is, in my opinion, much indebted to him for conceiving and exe- 
cuting such gigantic designs for the improvement of the metropolis. The 
greater part too is still ' in petto,' but will doubtless soon be called into ex- 
istence by English opulence and the universal rage for building. It's true, 
one must not look too nicely into the details. The church, for instance, 
which serves as 'point de vue' to Regent Street, ends in a ridiculous spire, 
while every part seems at variance with every other. It is a strange archi- 
tectural monster. There is an admirable caricature, in which Mr, Nash, 
a very small shrivelled man, is represented booted and spurred, riding spitted 
on the point of the spire. Below is the inscription "National (sounded 
nushional) taste.'''' 



16 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Many such monstrosities might be mentioned. Among others, on a bal- 
cony which adorns the largest mansion in the Regent's Park, there are four 
figures squeezed flat against the wall, whose purpose or import is extremely 
mysterious. They are clad in a sort of dressing-gown, whence we gather 
that they are at least designed for human figures. Perhaps they are em- 
blems of an hospital ; for these apparent palaces, like that at Potsdam, have 
unity and grandeur in their facade alone. They are often, in fact, only a 
conglomeration of small houses dedicated to the purposes of trade, manu- 
facture, or what not. 

Faultless, on the other hand, is the landscape-gardening part of the park, 
which also originates with Mr. Nash, especially in the disposition of the 
water. Art has here completely solved the difficult problem of concealing 
her operations under an appearance of unrestrained nature. You imagine 
you see a broad river flowing on through luxuriant banks, and going off* in 
the distance in several arms ; while in fact you are looking upon a small 
piece of standing, though clear, water, created by art and labour. So beau- 
tiful a landscape as this, with hills in the distance, and surrounded by an 
enclosure of magnificent houses a league in circuit, is certainly a design 
worthy of one of the capitals of the world; and when the young trees are 
grown into majestic giants, will scarcely find a rival. In the execution of 
Mr. Nash's plan many old streets have been pulled down, and during the 
last ten years more than sixty thousand new houses built in this part of the 
town. It is, in my opinion, a peculiar beauty of the new streets, that, 
though broad, they do not run in straight lines, but make occasional curves 
which break their uniformity. 

If ever London has quays, and St. Paul's Church is laid open, according 
to the ingenious project of Colonel Trench, she will excel all other cities 
in magnificence, as much as she now does in magnitude. 

Among the new bridges, Waterloo Bridge holds the first rank. The pro- 
prietors are said to have lost 300,000/. by the undertaking. Twelve hun- 
dred feet in length, and enclosed between solid balustrades of granite, it af- 
fords an agreeable and almost solitary walk, and commands the finest river 
view, in so far as the fog will permit it to be seen, — in which palaces, 
bridges, churches, and vessels, are proudly blended. 

The contrivance for checking the toll-receivers was new to me. The 
iron turnstile through which you pass, and which is in the usual form of a 
cross, is so contrived that it describes each time only a quarter of the circle, 
just as much as is necessary to let one person through ; and at the moment 
when it stops, a mark falls in an enclosed case under the bridge. There is 
a similar contrivance for carriages ; and the proprietors have only to count 
the marks in an evening, to know accurately how many foot and horse-pas- 
sengers cross the bridge daily. The former pay a penny, the latter three- 
pence, by which it was expected that three hundred pounds a day would be 
taken, instead of which the receipts seldom exceed fifty. 

October 1th. 

What would delight you here is the extreme cleanliness of the houses, 
the great convenience of the furniture, and the good manners and civility of 
all serving people. It is true that one pays for all that appertains to luxury 
(for the strictly necessary is not much dearer than with us), six times as 
high ; but then one has six times as much comfort. In the inns everything 
is far better and more abundant than on the Continent. The bed, for in- 
stance, which consists of several mattrasses laid one upon another, is large 
enough to contain two or three persons ; and when the curtains which hang 
from the square tester supported on substantial mahogany columns, are drawn 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 17 

around you, you find yourself as it were in a little cabinet, — a room, which 
would be a very comfortable dwelling- for a Frenchman. On your washing- 
table you find — not one miserable water-bottle, with a single earthen or sil- 
ver jug and basin, and a long strip of a towel, such as are given you in all 
hotels and many private houses in France and Germany; but positive tubs 
of handsome porcelain, in which you may plunge half your body ; half-a- 
dozen wide towels ; a multitude of fine glass bottles and glasses, great and 
small ; a large standing looking-glass, foot-baths, &c, not to mention other 
anonymous conveniences of the toilet, all of equal elegance. 

Everything presents itself before you in so attractive a guise, that as soon 
as you wake you are allured by all the charms of the bath. If you want 
any tiling, the sound of your bell brings either a neatly dressed maid-servant, 
with a respectful curtesy, or a smart well-dressed waiter, who receives your 
orders in the garb and with the air of an adroit valet ; instead of an un- 
combed lad, in a short jacket and green apron, who asks you* with a mix- 
ture of stupidity and insolence, " Was schaffen's Ihr Gnoden ?" (What is 
it, your Honour?), or " Haben Sle hier jeklingelt?" (Was it you, here, that 
rung?), and then runs out again without understanding properly what is 
wanted. Good carpets cover the floors of all the chambers ; and in the 
brightly" polished steel grate burns a cheerful fire, instead of the dirty logs, 
or the smoky and ill-smelling stoves to be found in so many of our inns. 

If you go out, you never find a dirty staircase, nor one in which the light- 
ing serves only to make darkness visible. Throughout the house, day and 
night, reign the greatest order and decency ; and in some hotels every spa- 
cious set of apartments has its own staircase, so that no one comes in con- 
tact with others. At table, the guest is furnished with a corresponding pro- 
fusion of white table linen, and brilliantly polished table utensils ; with a 
well-filled ' plat de menage,' and an elegance of setting out which leaves no- 
thing to wish for. The servants are always there when you want them, 
and yet are not intrusive: the master of the house generally makes his ap- 
pearance with the first dish, and inquires whether everything is as you de- 
sire ;— in short, the best inns afford everything that is to be found in the 
house of a travelled gentleman, and the attendance is perhaps more perfect 
and respectful. It is true the reckoning is of a piece with the rest, and you 
must pay the waiters nearly as much as you would a servant of your own. 
In the first hotels, a waiter is not satisfied with less than two pounds a-week 
for his own private fees. Such gifts or vales are more the order of the day 
in England than in any other country, and are asked with the greatest 
shamelessness even in the churches. 

I visited the bazaars to-day. These establishments have come very much 
into fashion within the last few years, and afford great facilities to buyers. 
The so-called horse bazaar is built on a very large scale, and daily draws to- 
gether a very motley assemblage. It includes several extensive buildings, 
where hundreds of carriages and harness of every kind, new and old (the lat- 
ter made to look like new), are exposed to sale, at all prices, in a very long 
gallery. In other rooms are porcelain wares, articles of dress, glass mirrors, 
' quincaillerie,' toys, and even collections of foreign birds and butterflies, all 
for sale. At length you reach a coffee-room in the centre of the establish- 
ment, with a glazed gallery running round an open space. Here, while 
comfortably seated at breakfast (in rather mixed company it is true), you see 
a number of horses led out from the extensive stables where they are well 
taken care of, and to which any one who has a horse to sell may send it for 
a certain fee. They are then put up to auction. When a horse is warrant- 
ed sound by the auctioneer, you may buy it with tolerable safety, since the 

3 



18 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

proprietor of the establishment is responsible for the warranty. The best are 
certainly not to be found liere, but the cheapest are; and to many this is a 
great recommendation : perhaps a still greater is the being able to get all one 
wants in the same place. There are already, as 1 said, several of these ba- 
zaars, and they are worth a visit. The convenient walking on the excellent 
'trottoirs,' the gay and ever-changing groups, and the numerous splendid 
shops, make the streets of London, especially in the evening, a very agree- 
able walk to a foreigner. 

Besides the brilliant gas-lights, there are large globes of glass in the drug- 
gists' shops, filled with liquid of a deep red, blue, or green colour, the splen- 
did light of which is visible for miles, and often serves as a beacon, though 
sometimes as an ' ignis fatuus,' if you are unlucky enough to mistake one 
for another. 

Of all the shops, the most attractive are those in which the beautiful En- 
glish crystal is sold. Real diamonds can scarcely glitter more dazzlingly than 
the far-gleaming collections of some manufacturers. I observed too some articles 
of rose or other coloured glass, but I was surprised to see how little the forms 
were changed. The crown lustres, for instance, are just the same as ever ; 
and yet I should think that they might be made in the form of suns with 
diverging rays, or of bouquets of flowers, instead of this eternal crown ; or 
that small lustres of gay colours, set like 'bijous' of various gems, and fixed 
against the walls of rooms of appropriate, perhaps oriental, decorations, would 
produce a new and striking effect. 

Other very interesting shops contain all the newest implements of agri- 
culture and the mechanic arts, from huge drilling machines and an apparatus 
for uprooting old trees, to small delicate garden shears, all set out in exten- 
sive premises, all arranged with a certain elegance, which is universal, even 
among the dealers in meat, fish and vegetables. The shops of ironmongers 
and dealers in lamps well deserve a visit ; affording, as they do, a display of 
the new and the useful, which it would not be easy to find on the whole 
Continent, either to the same extent or in the same exact perfection. The 
traveller, however, who confines himself to the • salons' and the like, and 
who wants to see only genteel sights, had better stay at home. 

I closed the day with a walk to Chelsea, the hospital for invalid soldiers, 
where one rejoices to see the old warriors well taken care of, inhabiting a 
palace, and enjoying gardens with the most beautiful smooth-mowed 'bowl- 
ing-green' and lofty avenues of horse-chestnut trees, of which a little sove- 
reign might be proud. 

I dined at the ambassador's at eight o'clock. The dinner was re- 
markable not only for the amiability of the host, but for genuine Metternich- 
Johannisberg ; for which nectar, even the most inveterate liberal must allow 

justice to be done to the great minister. At table I found friend B , the 

youth of forty, who charged me with abundance of compliments to you. He 
is the same as ever, and entertained me with a long conversation about his 
toilet; he declared that he had grown dreadfully thin in England from ennui. 

I must here give you "notice that I can say nothing about London society 
till a longer residence and ' the season' have enabled me to speak with 
more confidence on the subject. So long as London remains desert as Pal- 
myra, as to the fashionable world, I shall confine myself to a description of 
places. 

October 10th. 

A few days ago I took advantage of rather brighter weather to visit Chis- 
wick, a villa of the Duke of Devonshire's, which is esteemed the most ele- 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 19 

guiit specimen of garden decoration, of its kind, in England. I had seen it 
some years ago at a fete given by the Duke but only superficially. I could 
not, even now, see the pictures, as the house was inhabited by a visitor. 

I found the garden much altered, but not 1 think for the better; for there 
is now a mixture of the regular and the irregular which has a very unpleasant 
effect. The ugly fashion now prevalent in England, of planting the ' plea- 
sure-ground' with single trees or shrubs placed at a considerable distance 
almost in rows, has been introduced in several parts of these grounds. This 
gives the grass-plats the air of nursery-grounds. The shrubs are trimmed 
round, so as not to touch each other, the earth carefully cleared about them 
every day, and the edges of the turf cut into stiff lines, so that you see more 
of black earth than of green foliage, and the free beauty of nature is quite 
checked. Mr. Nash, however, adheres to a very different principle, and the 
new gardens of Buckingham Palace are models to all planters. 

The most favourable circumstance to English gardeners is the mildness of 
the climate. Common and Portuguese laurels, azaleas, and rhododendrons 
are not injured by the frost, and afford the most beautiful luxuriant thickets, 
summer and winter, and, in their respective seasons, the richest blossoms 
and berries. 

Magnolias are seldom covered, and even camellias stand abroad in pecu- 
liarly sheltered spots, with only the protection of a matting. The turf pre- 
serves its beautiful freshness all winter ; indeed at that season it is usually 
thicker and more beautiful than in summer, when I remember, in dry weather, 
to have seen it worse than ever I saw it in the Mark. The present is just 
the season in which the whole vegetation is in its utmost magnificence. 

A pretty effect is produced at Chiswick by a single lofty tree, the stem of 
which has been cleared up to the very top, and from beneath which you 
command a view of the whole garden and a part of the park ; — a good hint 

to landscape gardeners, which I advise you to profit by at M . The 

cedars here (which unfortunately will not thrive with us) are celebrated, and 
grow to the size of old fir-trees. Colossal yew hedges also show how long 
this estate has been an object of extraordinary care. The new conservato- 
ries do more credit to the taste of the present possessor than the pleasure- 
ground. It is strange enough that orange-trees nowhere reach any great size 
in England. They are very 'mesquin' here. On the other hand, the 
flower-gardens are magnificent. The beds are so thinly planted that each 
separate plant has room to spread, excepting in those beds which are en- 
tirely filled with one sort of flower. In them, the chief aim is the perfection 
of the whole, and they are consequently by far the most beautiful. In the 
pinery I saw, for the first time, the great Providence pines, specimens of 
which have been produced of twelve pounds weight. 

There is a menagerie attached to the garden, in which a tame elephant 
performs all sorts of feats, and very quietly suffers anybody to ride him 
about a large grass-plat. His neighbour is a lama, of a much less gentle 
nature; his weapon is a most offensive saliva, which he spits out to a dis- 
tance of some yards at any one who irritates him ; he takes such good aim, 
and fires so suddenly at his antagonist, that it is extremely difficult to avoid 
his charge. 

Chiswick has unfortunately only stagnant slimy water, which is sometimes 
so low that the elephant, if he were thirsty, might drink it up at a draught. 

Passing through a continued series of pretty villas and country-houses of 
every kind, amid the whirl of horsemen, stage-coaches, travelling-carriages, 
and coal-wagons drawn by gigantic horses, with occasional pretty glimpses 
of the Thames, I reached Hyde-Park Corner, after an hour's quick driving, 
and buried myself anew in the labyrinth of the huge town. 



20 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

The next day I visited the City, accompanied by my ' laquais de place,' a 
Swiss, who had travelled in Egypt, Syria, Siberia, and America ; had pub- 
lished a Russian Post-book ; brought the first intelligence of the taking of 
Hamburg, together with an actual specimen of a live .Cossack, to London ; 
bought Napoleon's coronation robes at Paris, and exhibited them here ; and 
speaks almost all the European languages. I think all this is not dear at 
half-a-guinea a day. He may be useful, too, as a physician, for he has col- 
lected so many secrets and recipes in his travels, that he has a domestic 
remedy for every disorder, and moreover, as he maintains, is in possession 
of a thousand different receipts for making punch. Under the conduct of 
this universal genius, I entered the Royal Exchange for the first time. 

In other cities the Exchange has merely a mercantile air — here it has a 
completely historical one. The imposing statues of English sovereigns 
around, the most remarkable among whom are Henry the Eighth and Eliza- 
beth, combined with the antique and stately architecture, excite a poetical 
feeling, to which the though^; of the boundless commerce of which London 
is the centre gives a still deeper significancy. The men, however, who 
animate the picture soon draw one back into the region of common-place, 
for selfishness and avarice gleam but too clearly from every eye. In this 
point of view, the place I am describing, and indeed the ivhole city, have a 
repulsive sinister aspect, which almost reminds one of the restless and com- 
fortless throng of the spirits of the damned. 

The great court of the Exchange is surrounded by covered arcades, on 
which inscriptions point out to the merchants of every nation their several 
places of assembling. In the centre stands a statue of Charles the Second, 
who built this edifice. Its port and bearing precisely express the man whom 
history describes; not handsome, but somewhat graceful, and with an in- 
veterate levity of features, composed, as if in mockery, to seriousness: a 
levity which nothing could correct, because it sprang from mediocrity, and 
which made this king as agreeable and careless a 'roue' as he was a worth- 
less ruler. In niches above stand the busts of other English sovereigns. I 
have already mentioned Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. They would be 
striking, independently of all associations ; — Henry, fat anil contented, and 
with an expression of wanton cruelty: Elizabeth, with an air of masculine 
greatness, and yet of feminine spite. The busts are doubtless copied from 
the best originals by Holbein. On this story is the celebrated Lloyd's Coffee 
House, the dirtiest place of the kind in London, which exhibits few traces 
of the millions daily exchanged in it. 

Close by is the vast and beautiful building, the Bank of England, con- 
taining a number of rooms, of various dimensions, generally lighted from 
above, and destined to the various offices. Hundreds of clerks are here at 
work, and mechanically conduct the gigantic business, at which the ' nil ad- 
mirari' becomes a difficult matter to a poor German ; especially when he is 
admitted into the Bullion Office where the ingots are kept, and gazes astounded 
on the heaps of gold'and silver which appear to him to realize the wonders 
of the Arabian Nights. 

From hence I proceeded to the Town-House (Guildhall), where the Lord 
Mayor was just in the act of administering the law. The present Lord 
Mayor is a bookseller, hut cut a very good figure in his blue gown and gold 
chain, and assumed a truly monarchical dignity. I do not think that he ac- 
quitted himself at all worse than a regular officer of justice ; — ever since 
Sancho Panza's time, it is admitted that a sound understanding often dis- 
cerns the right more truly than learned subtlety. 

The scene of action was a moderate-sized room, half-filled with the low- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 21 

est populace. The matter in hand was the most frequent and ordinary- 
theme in England — a theft ; and as the culprit, who appeared equally indif- 
ferent and ' ennuye', after a little hesitation, confessed the offence, the drama 
soon came to a close. 

Further still did we wander on in the tumultuous ' City,' where you may 
be lost like a flitting atom, if you do not pass on to the right or left accord- 
ing to rule ; where you seem to be in continual danger of being spitted on 
the shaft of a cabriolet driving too near the narrow ' trottoir,' or crushed un- 
der the weight of an overloaded and tottering stage-coach edifice. At length 
we reached an extremely dark and mean-looking coffee-house, called Gang- 
way's, where estates and houses of enormous value are daily put up to sale. 
We took our seat with great gravity, as if we had been desirous of making 
some important purchase, and admired the uncommon suavity of manner 
and incredible address with which the auctioneer excited the desire to pur- 
chase among his audience. He was very well dressed in black, with a wig, 
and stood with all the dignity of a professor in tois chair. He pronounced 
a charming oration on every estate, and failed not to season it with various 
jokes and witticisms, at the same time eulogizing every object in so irresisti- 
ble a manner that one would have sworn that all the property went for an 
old song. 

How could I leave the city without visiting the true ' Lion,' (the English 
expression for anything extraordinary) — the sovereign— in a word, Roths- 
child ? 

I found him, too, in a poor obscure-looking place, (his residence is in 
another part of the town,) and making my way with some difficulty through 
the little court-yard, blocked up by a wagon laden with bars of silver, I was 
introduced into the presence of this Grand Ally of the Holy Alliance. I 
found the Russian consul in the act of paying his court. He is an acute, 
clever man, perfect in the part he has to play, and uniting the due respect 
with a becoming air of dignity. This was the more difficult, because the 
very original aristocrat of the city did not stand much on ceremony. On 
my presenting my letter of credit, he said ironically, that we were lucky 
people who could afford to travel about so, and take our pleasure ; while he, 
poor man, had such a heavy burthen to bear. He then broke out into bit- 
ter complaints that every poor devil who came to England had something 
or other to ask of him. " Yesterday," said he, ". here was a Russian beg- 
ging of me" (an episode which threw a bitter-sweet expression over the con- 
sul's face) ; " and, "added he, " the Germans here don't give me a moment's 
peace." Now it was my turn to put a good face upon the matter. After 
this, the conversation took a political turn, and we both of course agreed that 
Europe could not subsist without him ; — he modestly declined our compli- 
ment, and said, smiling, " Oh no, you are only jesting — I am but a servant, 
who people are pleased with because he manages their affairs well, and to 
whom they let some crumbs fall as an acknowledgment." 

All this was said in a language quite peculiar to himself, half English, 
half German — the English part with a broad German accent, but with the 
imposing confidence of a man who feels such trifles to be beneath his atten- 
tion. This truly original language struck me as very characteristic of a man 
who is unquestionably a person of genius, and of a certain sort of greatness 
of character. 

I had begun my day, very appropriately for England, with the Royal 
Exchange, the resort of merchants, and ended it with Exeter 'Change, 
where I saw the representatives of the colonies, — the wild beasts. Here I 
found another lion, and this time a genuine one, called Nero, who besides 



22 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

his tameness, has the rarer merit in our northern latitude, of having present- 
ed England with six generations of young lions. He is of enormous size 
and dignified aspect, but now rests upon his laurels and sleeps royally nearly 
all day long. If he wakes in an ill humour, however, he makes the old 
wooden house and all the herd of subject beasts tremble. These consist of 
elephants, tigers, leopards, hyaenas, zebras, monkeys, ostriches, condors, 
parrots, &c. It is curious that they are not upon the ground floor, but up 
one or two pair of stairs, so that one can ride on a tame elephant which 
stands always ready saddled, and enjoy a fine extensive prospect. The va- 
riety is great, and the price moderate. The ambassador of the late King of 
Wurtemburg had, as I well remember, more occupation here than in St. 
James' and Downing Street; and, indeed, I know that he was for a con- 
siderable time in fear of losing his post on account of a strange enormous 
dead tortoise. 

On the way home to my hotel we passed a house which furnished my 
cicerone with an occasion of telling the following interesting story. If it is 
' brode,' I beg of you to blame him and not me.* 

October 13th. 

Fatigued by my tour the day before yesterday, I passed the following 
morning in my own room. In the evening I visited the English Opera. 
The house is neither large nor elegant, but the actors very good. There 
was no opera, however, but hideous melo-drames ; first, Frankenstein, 
where a human being is made by magic, — a manufacture which answers 
very ill; and then the Vampire, after the well-known tale falsely attributed 
to Lord Byron. The principal part in both was acted by Mr. Cooke, who 
is distinguished for a 'very handsome person, skilful acting, and a remarka- 
bly dignified, noble, deportment. The acting was, indeed, admirable through- 
out, but the pieces so stupid and monstrous that it was impossible to sit out 
the performance. The heat, the exhalations, and the audience were not the 
most agreeable. Besides all this, the performance lasted from seven to half- 
past twelve, — too long for the best. 

The next day I drove to Hampton Court to visit the palace, the stud, and 

my old friend Lady . Of all three I found the first the least altered, 

and the celebrated vine laden as usual with grapes. It had considerably 
above a thousand bunches, and completely covered a hot-house of seventy- 
five feet long by twenty-five wide. In a corner stood, like the dim pro- 
genitor of a haughty race, its brown stem, as lost and obscure as if it did 
not belong to the magnificent canopy of leaves and fruit which owe their 
existence to it alone. 

Most of the rooms in the palace have still the same furniture as in the 
time of William the Third. The torn chairs and curtains are carefully pre- 
served. The walls are hung with many interesting and admirable pictures; 
— above all, the celebrated Cartoons of Raphael, which, however, are soon 
to be transferred to the King's new palace. I must only mention two fine 

* Here follows the well-known story of Mrs. Montague's May-day entertainment of 
the chimney-sweeps, and the incident to which it is usually said to have owed its rise. 

After this comes an account of the mad attempt of Mr. Montague, the ci-devant 
sweep, together with a Mr. Barnett, to descend the fulls of Schaff hausen in a boat, 
where both were of course lost. All this, being both familiar to us, and inaccurately 
told, has been omitted. The cicerone, who professed to have been a servant of this 
Mr. Montague, had probably heard the incident related of Mr. Sedley Burdett and 
Lord Frederick Montague. It only proves how necessary was the author's disclaimer 
of responsibility. — Thansl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 23 

portraits, — that of Wolscy, the haughty founder of this palace, and that of 
Henry the Eighth, his treacherous master. Both are admirable and highly 
characteristic. You remember that fat lawyer whom we had such dif- 
ficulty in getting rid of; with an animal expression of countenance, sensual, 
bloodthirsty as far as the present times render it possible to be so, clever, 
subtle, full of talent and of craft, with boundless haughtiness, and yet a re- 
sistless tendency to the vulgar, and, lastly, utterly and frankly devoid of all 
conscience; — give the picture of Henry a green frock-coat and pearl but- 
tons, and you have a most faithful portrait of him. 

Nature continually repeats herself in different ' nuances,' — they vary ac- 
cording to the state of mankind and of the world. 

In the night I was very nearly suffocated. The Jocrisse I imported, who 
had probably been too hospitably entertained by some English acquaintance, 
thought proper to take the coals out of the fireplace while I was asleep, and 
left them standing in my room in a lackered coal-scuttle. A frightful smoke 
and infernal smell fortunately awoke me just as I was dreaming that I was 
a courtier of Henry the Eighth, and was paying my court to a French 
beauty at the Champ du Drap d'Or ; otherwise I should have gone to meet 
the fair one of my dream in heaven. 

Almost like that heaven, as distant and as lovely, appears to me the place 
where you are dwelling, my truest friend : and thus I send you the kiss of 
peace across the sea, and close my first English letter, wishing you health 
and every blessing. 

Your devoted L . 



LETTER IV. 

London, Oct. ]5th, 1826. 

It seems to me that I shall never get accustomed to this climate, for ever 
since my landing I have felt perpetually unwell. However, so long as I am 
not confined to my chamber, I do not suffer it to depress me much ; I ride 
a great deal in the lovely cultivated environs of London, and do not abstain 
from my walks about the town. 

The turn of the British Museum came lately, where a strange " Misch- 
mascti'' of works of art, natural curiosities, books, and models, are pre- 
served in a miserable building. 

At the top of the staircase, as you enter, stand two enormous giraffes, in 
the character of stuffed guards, or emblems of English taste ! There is, 
doubtless, much that is interesting in the various apartments. I confess, 
however, to my shame, that I must be in a peculiarly favourable state of 
mind not to have an attack of indigestion after such a surfeit of sights. 
Among the antediluvian remains I saw an enormous and remarkably perfect 
pair of stag's antlers, at least six limes as large as the largest of those which 

friend C keeps in the stag-gallery of his castle. In a huge shed are 

deposited the noble Elgin Marbles, as they are here called. 

A bust of Hippocrates struck me as being so perfect a representation of 
the physician by profession, that here in England one can hardly look at it 
without putting one's hand in one's pocket.* I looked at the celebrated 
Portland Vase with all the enthusiasm it is calculated to excite. I send you 

* English physicians expect a guinea at every visit. — Editor. 



24 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

two little works on tlie Vase and the Elgin Marbles, with very tolerable 
outline engravings. But I must now quit yon to give orders about pack- 
ing ; for to-morrow I mean to start for Newmarket races. 

Newmarket, Oct. 19///. 

The beauty of the country, and the extraordinary neatness and elegance 
of every place through which my road lay to-day, struck me anew in the 
most agreeable manner. These fertile and well-cultivated fields : these 
thousands of comfortable and pretty farm-houses and cottages scattered over 
every part of the country ; this incessant stream Of elegant carriages, well- 
mounted horsemen, and well-dressed foot-passengers, are peculiar to Eng- 
land. The beautiful picture has but one fault, — it is all too cultivated, too 
perfect; thence always and everywhere the same, and consequently, in the 
long run, wearisome : — indeed I can even conceive that it must become dis- 
tasteful in time, like a savoury dish of dainties to the stomach of a sated 
man. This may explain the great taste of the English for travelling on the 
Continent. It is just so in life, — the thing men can the least bear is undis- 
turbed good fortune, and it may be doubted whether father Adam would not 
have died of ennui in paradise. 

To-day, however, a due proportion of shadows was provided for me. In 
consequence of the great resort to the races, I found at every stage only 
miserable overdriven horses, sometimes none at all, so that, according to the 
English standard, I travelled wretchedly, and did not reach Newmarket till 
late at night. 

There was no room in any of the inns ; and I thought myself happy at 
last to get one small room in a private house, for which I paid five guineas 
a week. Fortunately I met an old acquaintance in the same house, — the 
son of a little Hungarian Magnate, who seems formed to please himself and 
others by his unpretending good-nature and joyous temper. I revere such 
natures, precisely because they have all that I want. 

Next morning I rode about with him to reconnoitre the ground a little. 
One day here is precisely like another. At half-past nine in the morning 
3 r ou see some hundreds of race-horses, carefully clothed, taking their morn- 
ing promenade on a rising ground. The bare, wide-spread heath is covered 
with them as with a herd of cattle ; some are walking at a foot pace, others 
galloping, some slower, some quicker, but none at full speed. An inspector 
on a little poney generally accompanies the horses which belong to the same 
gentleman, or which are under the care of the same training-groom. The 
horses are all ridden without a saddle by little half-dressed lads, one of whom 
is every now and then thrown for the amusement of the spectators. After 
this exhibition, certainly a most interesting one to every amateur of horses, 
people breakfast, and in half an hour go to the sale, which takes place al- 
most every clay in the open street, under the auspices of the far-famed Mr. 
Tattersall. They then ride or drive to the races. 

These begin pretty punctually at twelve o'clock. An interminable grassjr 
plain covered with a thick short turf is the ground, where various distances, 
from a full German mile as maximum, to an eighth or tenth, as minimum, 
are marked for the course in a perfectly straight line. Near the end, this 
course is enclosed between ropes, on the outside of which rows of carriages 
three and four deep are drawn up, generally without horses, and covered 
within and without, from top to bottom, with spectators. At the goal itself 
is a wooden house on wheels, very like those the shepherds have in many 
parts of Germany, so that it can be moved about in case the course is 
lengthened or shortened : in this sits the judge. Just opposite to him is a 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 



25 



post fixed in the ground, by means of which he determines which horse's 
nose first appears exactly on a line with it; for an inch often decides the 
race: and it is a very skilful piece of policy and jockeyship of the riders 
here, to betray the real speed of their horses as little as possible, and to dis- 
play only as much of it as is necessary to win the race. If they see they 
have no chance, they immediately give up; so that those who contend for 
victory to the last, are always very nearly together at the goal. The gro- 
tesque spectacle of a rider a mile in the rear, belabouring his horse with 
whip and spur, like a steam-engine, is exhibited only in France and Ger- 
many. If two horses reach the post exactly at the same moment, (which 
frequently happens,) they must run again. The judge is upon oath, and 
there is no appeal from his decision. The English jockeys (who are not, 
as foreigners think, little boys, but often dwarfish men of sixty,) form a 
perfectly distinct class, and are the best practical riders I know of. You 
remember that I kept race-horses myself, and had a Newmarket jockey for 
a time in my service, who won a considerable bet for me at Vienna. It 
amused me greatly to see this fellow ' training' himself. After dosing him- 
self severely, he would go out in the greatest heat, dressed in three or four 
great-coats, ride a certain distance at a hard trot, till the sweat streamed off" 
him in torrents, and he almost sank from exhaustion ; ' mais tel etoit son 
plaisir,' and the more completely good-for-nothing he felt, the better he was 
pleased.* 

But there are bounds to this : for the man, by excessive training, may 
reduce himself below the weight which the horse is bound to carry, and 
thus subject himself to the inconvenient necessity of carrying lead in the 
girths. At a certain distance from the goal, about a hundred paces to the 
side, stands another white post called the betting-post. Here the bettors as- 
semble, after they have seen the horses saddled in the stables at the begin- 
ning of the course, thoroughly examined into all the circumstances of the 
impending race, or perhaps given a wink to some devoted jockey. The 
scene which ensues would to many appear the most strange that ever was 
exhibited. In noise, uproar, and clamour, it resembles a Jews' synagogue, 
with a greater display of passion. The persons of the drama are the first 
peers of England, livery-servants, the lowest 'sharpers' and ' blacklegs ;' — 
in short, all who have money to bet here claim equal rights ; nor is there 
any marked difference in their external appearance. Most of them have 
pocket-books in their hands, each calls aloud his bet, and when it is taken, 
each party immediately notes it in his book. Dukes, lords, grooms, and 
rogues, shout, scream, and halloo together, and bet together, with a volu- 
bility and in a technical language out of which a foreigner is puzzled to 
make anything ; till suddenly the cry is heard, " The horses have started !" 
In a minute the crowd disperses ; but the bettors soon meet again at the 
ropes which enclose the course. You see a multitude of telescopes, opera- 
glasses and eye-glasses, levelled from the carriages and by the horsemen, in 
the direction whence the'jockeys are coming. With the speed of the wind 

* Let me take this opportunity of advising those of my Berlin friends who mean to 
run horses, to have them trained by well-recommended English grooms ; for it is far 
from being the fact, that every English groom without exception understands the busi- 
ness, as I have satisfactorily convinced myself. They think they have trained a horse, 
when by blood-letting, medicine and exercise, they have reduced him to a skeleton, 
and taken away all his strength, which real training increases tenfold. Both the well 
and ill trained are equally thin; but in the latter it is the leanness of debility and ex- 
haustion; in the former, the removal of all unnecessary flesh and fat, and the highest 
power and developement of the muscles. — Editor. 

4 



26 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

they are seen approaching ; and for a few moments a deep and anxious si- 
lence pervades the motley crowd; while a manager on horseback keeps the 
course clear, and applies his whip without ceremony to the shoulders of any 
intruder. The calm endures but a moment ; — then once more arises the 
wildest uproar; shouts and lamentations, curses and cheers re-echo on 
every side, from Lords and Ladies, far and wide. " Ten to four upon the 
Admiral!" "A hundred to one upon Madame Vestris !" "Small Beer 
against the field !" &c. are heard from the almost frantic bettors : and 
scarcely do you hear a " Done!" uttered here and there, when the noble 
animals are before you — past you — in the twinkling of an eye ; the next 
moment at the goal, and luck, or skill, or knavery have decided the victory. 
The great losers look blank for a moment; the winners triumph aloud; 
many make ' bonne mine a mauvais jeu,' and dart to the spot, where the 
horses are unsaddled and the jockeys weighed, to see if some irregularity 
may not yet give them a chance. In a quarter of an hour the same scene 
begins anew with other horses, and is repeated six or seven times. " Voila 
les courses de Newmarket!" 

The first day I was gifted with such a prophetic vision, that twice, by 
the mere exercise of my proper observation and judgment, I betted upon 
the winner at the saddling, and gained a considerable sum. But I had the 
usual fate of play, — what I won that day I lost the next, and as much more 
to boot. Whoever is a permanent winner here, is sure of his game before- 
hand; and it is well known that the principles of many of the English no- 
bility are remarkably wide and expansive on this head. 

Among the company present, I found several old acquaintances, who gave 
me permission to see their running horses in the stable, which is regarded 
as a signal favour. They also offered to introduce me into the Club here ; — 
an honour, however, which I declined. It is purely a gambling Club, — 
which a man should beware of in England, more than in any other country. 

It may be regarded as a part of the national costume, and highly charac- 
teristic of the general tradesman-like spirit, that beforehand all advantages 
are fair; but that after a bet is once taken, though often amidst the greatest 
hurry and confusion, it is scarcely ever disputed. On the other hand, a man 
who has lost more than he can pay, before reckoning-day becomes invisible, 
that is, commits an act of bankruptcy, and betakes himself to the Continent, 
either for ever, or till he can pay. 

On the first day of my visit to Newmarket, my Hungarian friend intro- 
duced me to the family of a rich merchant of this neighbourhood, who with 
his visitors, among whom were some very pretty girls, came daily to the races, 
and returned home after them. They invited us to dine with them the next 
day, and stay the day after, which we accepted with much pleasure. 

About five o'clock we set out on horseback. A newly planted, very broad 
double avenue of beeches marked the beginning of our host's property, and 
led us through about half a mile of road to the entrance of his park, — a sort 
of triumphal arch between two lodges, to which the park paling joined. 
This was however concealed in the plantation for some distance on either 
side the lodges, so that they appeared to stand in the midst of wood, and 
thus produced a.very good effect. For some time our way led us through 
a thick plantation, till we reached the lawn, studded with groups of trees, 
which invariably forms the chief feature of an English park. Here we 
caught sight of the house, behind which lay the high trees and ' shrubberies.' 

Some cows lay on the grass just before the door of the house, so that we 
were obliged almost to ride over them — a strange anomaly, which even 
Repton animadverts upon. It is the custom here to have the park, that is 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 27 

the ornamented pasture land, extend on one side, if not on both, to the very- 
house ; but surely it would be in better taste to have the garden and plea- 
sure-ground around the house. It seems to me, that however agreeable the 
distant view of cattle may be, their immediate vicinity, with all its accom- 
paniments, is not very pleasant. 

We found a pretty numerous company, consisting of the master and mis- 
tress of the house, both of middle age, their eldest married daughter with 
her husband, two younger daughters, a neighbouring Baronet with his 

pretty wife, and her very pleasing but very melancholy sister, Miss , a 

much courted lady who frequently moves in higher circles, three gentlemen 
not remarkable for anything, the son of the house, and lastly, a London beau 
of the second class, — a study of an aspiring City dandy. 

The Baronet had served in Germany, and had, as he told us, obtained the 
cross of Maria Theresa. He did not wear it, because he thought the thing 
very well for a young man, but, not at all suitable to the quiet country gen- 
tleman's life he now led. He was a simple, kind-hearted man, who ap- 
peared to have been invited to meet us as best acquainted with the Continent. 
We however preferred taking lessons in English manners of his wife and 
her sister. 

According to this system of manners, as it appeared, a visit from two 

* Noblemen,' (even foreign ones, though these are full fifty per cent, under 
natives,) was an honour to a house of the ' volee' of our host's. We were 
therefore amazingly ' fetes ;' even the dandy was — as far as the rules of his 

• metier' permitted — civil and obliging to us. It is an almost universal 
weakness of the unnoble in England, to parade an acquaintance with the 
noble: the noble do the same with regard to the 'fashionable' or 'exclu- 
sive ;' a peculiar caste, an emperium in imperio, which exercises a still more 
despotical power in society, and is not influenced by rank, still less by 
riches, but finds the possibility of its maintenance only in this national foible. 

It is therefore a great delight to the English of the middle classes to travel 
on the Continent, where they easily make acquaintance with people of rank, 
of whom they can talk as of intimate friends when they come home. A 
merchant's wife once gave me a specimen of this : " Do you know the 

Queen of ?" said she. I replied that " I had had the honour of being 

presented to her." " She is a great friend of mine," added she, — exactly 
as if she had been talking of her husband's partner's wife. She immediately 
exhibited, among the numerous trinkets which hung about her, a portrait of 
the Queen, which, as she said, Her Majesty had given her. ' 

It was very likely true, for her daughter produced a letter from Princess 

, a married daughter of the Queen, containing the most confidential 

communications concerning her marriage and domestic affairs, which has 
probably been made to serve for some time as ' cheval de parade' to gratify 
the vanity of the possessor. Is it not most extraordinary that our German 
great people, many of whom are by no means wanting in pride and ' morgue' 
towards their own countrymen, should treat every little English Squire or 
Miss, however utterly deficient in intellectual pretensions, almost as an equal, 
without in the least inquiring whether this person occupies a station at home 
which warrants such a reception ? 

Nothing lets us down more in the eyes of the English themselves than 
this obsequious worship of foreigners ; the meanness of which consists in 
this, that its true foundation generally lies in the profound respect which high 
and low have for English money. 

It requires a considerable fortune here to keep up a country-house ; for 
custom demands many luxuries, and, according to the aspiring and imitative 



28 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

manners of the country, as much (in the main things) at the shopkeeper's 
house, as at the Duke's ; — a handsomely fitted-up house, with elegant furniture, 
plate, servants in new and handsome liveries, a profusion of dishes and for- 
eign wines, rare and expensive dessert, and in all things an appearance of 
superfluity, — ' plenty' as the English call it. As long as there are visitors 
in the house, this way of life goes on : but many a family atones for it by 
meagre fare when alone : for which reason nobody here ventures to pay a 
visit in the country without being invited, and these invitations usually fix 
the day and hour. The acquaintances are generally numerous ; and as both 
room and the time allotted to the reception of guests are small, one must give 
place to another. True hospitality this can hardly be called ; it is rather the 
display of one's own possessions, for the purpose of dazzling as many as 
possible. After a family has thus kept open house for a month or two, they 
go for the remainder of the time they have to spend in the country, to make 
visits at the houses of others ; but the one hospitable month costs as much 
as a wealthy landed proprietor spends in a whole year with us. 

As you never were in England, I must say a few words on the routine of 
an English dinner, which, as I have said, is, ' a peu de chose pres', every- 
where alike. 

You like the details of daily life, and have often told me that you feel the 
want of them in most books of travels, and yet that nothing gives you a 
more lively conception of a foreign country. You must therefore forgive me 
if I go into trifles. 

The gentlemen lead the ladies into the dining-room, not as in France, by 
the hand, but by the arm ; and here, as there, are emancipated from the ne- 
cessity of those antiquated bows, which even in some of the best society in 
Germany, are exchanged every time one hands out a lady. On the other 
hand, there is a most anxious regard to rank, in the midst of all which the 
strangest blunders are made as to that of foreigners. I execrated mine to- 
day, as it brought me to the head of the table ; while my friend very cleverly 
slipped himself in between the pretty sisters. When you enter, you find the 
whole of the first course on the table, as in France. 

After the soup is removed, and the covers are taken off, every man helps 
the dish before him, and offers some of it to his neighbour;* if he wishes for 
anything else, he must ask across the table, or send a servant for it ; — a very 
troublesome custom, in place of which, some of the most elegant travelled 
gentlemen have adopted the more convenient German fashion of sending the 
servants round with the dishes. 

It is not usual to take wine without drinking to another person. When 
you raise your glass, you look fixedly at the one with whom you are drink- 
ing, bow you head, and then drink with great gravity. Certainly many of 
the customs of the South Sea Islanders, which strike us the most, are less 
ludicrous. It is esteemed a civility to challenge anybody in this way to drink ; 
and a messenger is often sent from one end of the table to the other to an- 
nounce to B that A wishes to take wine with him; whereupon 

each, sometimes with considerable trouble, catches the other's eye, and goes 
through the ceremony of the prescribed nod with great formality, looking at 
the moment very like a Chinese mandarin. If the company is small, and a 
man has drunk with everybody, but happens to wish for more wine, he must 
wait for the dessert, if he does not find in himself courage enough to brave 
custom. 

* The art of carving, which is too much neglected in Germany, forms part of a good 
English education. 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 29 

At the conclusion of the second course comes a sort of intermediate des- 
sert of cheese, butter, salad, raw celery, and the like; after which ale, some- 
times thirty or forty years old, and so strong that when thrown on the fire it 
blazes like spirit, is handed about. The tablecloth is then removed : under 
it, at the best tables, is a finer, upon which the dessert is set. At inferior 
ones, it is placed on the bare polished table. It consists of all sorts of hot- 
house fruits, which are here of the finest quality, Indian and native preserves, 
stomachic ginger, confitures, and the like. Clean glasses are set before every 
guest, and, with the dessert plates and knives and forks, small fringed nap- 
kins are laid. Three decanters are usually placed before the master of the 
house, generally containing claret, port, and sherry, or madeira. The host 
pushes these in stands, or in a little silver wagon on wheels, to his neighbour 
on the left. Every man pours out his own wine, and if a lady sits next him, 
also helps her; and so on till the circuit is made, when the same process 
begins again. Glass jugs filled with water happily enable foreigners to tem- 
per the brandy which forms so large a component part of English wines. 
After the dessert is set on, all the servants leave the room: if more is want- 
ed the bell is rung, and the butler (Haushofmeister) alone brings it in. The 
ladies sit a quarter of an hour longer, during which time sweet wines are 
sometimes served, and then rise from table. The men rise at the same time, 
one opens the door for them, and as soon as they are gone, draw closer to- 
gether ; the host takes the place of the hostess, and the conversation turns 
upon subjects of local and everyday interest, in which the stranger is pretty 
nearly forgotten, and must content himself with listening to what he can take 
very little part in. Every man is, however, at liberty to follow the ladies as 
soon as he likes, — a liberty of which Count B and I very quickly avail- 
ed ourselves. We had the singular satisfaction of learning that this was in 
accordance with the latest mode, as much drinking is now ' unfashionable.' 
Accordingly the dandy had already preceded us. We found him with the 
ladies, who received us in a 'salon,' grouped around a large table on which 
were tea and coffee.* When the whole company was re-assembled, all fell 
off into groups, according to their pleasure. Some entertained themselves 
with music; here and there a couple whispered in the recess of a window ; 
several talked politics; — the dandy alone remained solitary: sunk into a 
large easy chair, he had laid his elegantly shod right foot over his left knee, 
and in that attitude became apparently so absorbed in Madame de Stael's 
' Allemagne' that he took not the slightest notice of any one present. 

' A tout prendre,' I must do this pretty young fellow the justice to say that 
he was not at all a bad copy of higher originals. Perhaps I was bribed into 
this favourable opinion by his talking much at dinner about the great Goethe, 
and praising his ' Fost ;' both of whom (Gothe and Fost) Lord Byron has 
brought into fashion in England. Fost seemed to please him, particularly 
on account of what he conceived to be its atheistical tendency, for he had, 
as he informed us, spent half his life in Paris, and avowed himself an • es- 
prit fort.' 

The following day, after all breakfasting together, we rode with the ladies 

* When leaving the presence of the King, ladies are compelled to go out backwards 
(as one of them assured me.) It is against the laws of etiquette, — the observance of 
which is, particularly, so extremely rigorous in England, — to turn their backs upon Ma- 
jesty. This has been reduced to a regular military evolution, sometimes very embar- 
rassing to a new recruit. The ladies take close order with their backs to the door, to- 
wards which they retreat in a diagonal line. As soon as the fugel-woman reaches it, 

she faces to the right about, passes through, and the others follow her. Lady C 

commands. 



30 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

in the park, which contained nothing remarkable except a canal of stagnant 
and slimy water, which had cost five thousand pounds in the digging ; — an 
expense better spared. The fruit-gardens and hot-houses were admirable : 
the latter, a hobby of the proprietor, were heated by steam on a very inge- 
nious plan of his own, and the heat increased or diminished at pleasure by 
simply turning a cock. Three-and-twenty different sorts of pines, — above 
which, pendent from the glass roof, hung gigantic purple grapes,— fill these 
spacious, elegant houses ; and in the fruit-garden we admired pears on the 
wall seven inches in length, sixteen in circumference, and of an excellent 
flavour. 

Several of the gentlemen went hunting ; but we preferred the society at 

home. The gay amusing B was become the favourite of the ladies, 

and was evidently greatly regretted by them when the post-chaise arrived at 
one o'clock in the morning to take us back to Newmarket. I must confess 
that we took rather a laughing review of some things that struck us as ridicu- 
lous, though I was really ashamed that we were such genuine B 's* as 

to make ourselves merry at the expense of our host, and his company, instead 
of feeling hearty gratitude for our hospitable reception. 

But now-a-days the world is spoiled ; and besides, hospitality which 
springs from ostentation cannot expect the same hearty requital as that which 
is the offspring of the heart. Probably we guests fared no better in the 
house we had just quitted. 

At the races the next morning we saw the young ladies again, betted 
gloves with them till we lost, and delighted them with some Paris ones. 
We declined a second invitation, as we were engaged to a gentleman's din- 
ner, and Count B was going to a fox-hunt at Melton. I shall leave 

Newmarket too, and continue my letter in London. 

Epping-place, Oct. 20th. 

I have travelled as far as I wished, and must pass the night here, as the 
inspection of two parks has fully occupied my day. 

My trouble has been richly rewarded. The first, Audley-End, belonging 
to Lord Braybrooke, claims a place among the finest in the country. The 
road lies through the middle of it, with a deep ha-ha on each side, which 
secures the park and yet leaves a full view into it. You see, at first, an ex- 
tensive green landscape, in the centre of which is a broad, river-like, and 
beautifully formed piece of water, which unfortunately, however, has too 
little motion to prevent its being covered with duckweed. Near to the op- 
posite shore stands the splendid Gothic castle, which was originally built 
by the Duke of Suffolk, and was then three times as large as it is now. The 
multitude of its towers, projecting angles, and lofty many-formed windows, 
still give it a very imposing and picturesque appearance. 

Although Lady Braybrooke was at home, I obtained the uncommon per- 
mission to view it. I entered a wide and very simple hall, ornamented only 
with some gigantic stag's horns of great antiquity, and furnished with a few 
massive benches and chairs, on which the arms of the family were painted; 
some very old paintings ; a Gothic lamp ; a large table, consisting of two 
pieces of serpentine, of which only the upper side was polished, the rest 
quite rough ; and a dozen leather fire-buckets, also painted with the family 
arms. The ceiling was of wood, with deeply-carved compartments and old 
faded paintings. One saw at the first glance that it was no house of yester- 

* Probably Berliners. This accords with what has been said in the note p. 5, as to 
the North German acute and satirical character, as contrasted with Southern bonhom- 
mie. — Thansi,. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 31 

day one had entered. A high door of heavy carved oak led from hence into 
the baron's hall, a large room whose enormous windows reached from the 
ceiling to the floor, and afforded a free view of the landscape. Several family 
pictures, as large as life, partly painted by Vandyck, hung on the opposite 
wall ; and between them rose the huge marble chimney-piece, with the 
richly-coloured arms of the Suftblks executed upon it in stucco. The third 
side of the room, — that on which we entered, — was entirely covered with 
very fine and highly relieved carvings, figures half the size of life, like those 
one sees in the choirs of Gothic churches. Opposite were large folding 
doors which opened into the eating-hall, and on each side an open stair- 
case leading to the first story. The dining-room contains a portrait of Suf- 
folk, and one of Queen Elizabeth. Her red hair, ' fade' complexion and 
false look, and her over-done finery, gave no advantageous idea of the vain 
and gallant 'Maiden Queen.' 

On the first floor is a long narrow gallery full of pretty knick-knacks and 
antique curiosities. In the centre is a large chart of the winds, connected 
with the weather-cock on the tower, and destined to show the sportsman 
every morning which way the wind sets.* This serves as drawing-room, 
for most English country-houses and mansions are judiciously made to con- 
tain only one principal entertaining room ; which is much more convenient 
for the reception of a large company. 

The chapel is modern, but richly and tastefully ornamented ; and here, 
if the chaplain is absent, the lord of the house, according to ancient usage, 
reads divine service at ten o'clock every morning, at which all the family 
and servants must attend. 

The park is of considerable extent, but intersected by a troublesome num- 
ber of fences, which serve to allot to the sheep, cows, horses and deer, their 
several territories. Of the latter, there are from four to five hundred head, 
which generally graze pretty near together like a herd of tame cattle, and 
do not answer at all to our idea of game.t The flesh too has a totally dif- 
ferent flavour from that of the animals which roam free in our woods, just 
as they say the flesh of wild oxen differs from that of tame. 

The preserves for partridges and hares are also fenced in to protect the 
low copse from the cattle, in consequence of whose presence, the greater 
part of an English park consists, as I have already remarked, only of groups 
of high trees whose branches the cattle cannot reach. 

These extensive views, grand and striking as they are at first, become 
tiresome in time from their uniformity. Nor can I see that the numerous 
enclosures are advantages to the landscape. Almost every young tree has 
a fence round it to protect it from the cattle. 

Two temples and an obelisk, to which there is no other way than across 
the turf, have a very heterogeneous appearance in the midst of these pasture- 
grounds. The distant Gothic tower of Walden church, rearing its head pic- 
turesquely over the summits of the oaks, was in much better keeping. 

On the other hand I greatly admired the flower-garden and pheasantry. 
The first describes a large oval, surrounded with a thick natural evergreen 
wall of yew, laurel, rhododendron, cedar, cypress, box, holly, &c. ; a 
brook, adorned with a grotto and water-fall, flows through the velvet turf, 
on which the rare and splendid plants and flower-beds of every form and 
colour group themselves most beautifully. 

* A very useful piece of furniture to introduce at Court. — Editor. 

f Idee des Wildes: — The double sense of the word wild in German, — which when 
used substantively, exactly corresponds to our game (ferse naturx,) though adjectively 
it is the same as the English adjective, — makes it impossible to render' this. — Tbans. 



32 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

The pheasantry, which is nearly two miles from this spot, is a thick 
shady grove of various sorts of trees, of considerable extent, and surround- 
ed by a high wall. We could only get to it over the wet grass, as the 
gravel-walk commenced from the entrance-gate. This is from economv, for 
roads are excessively expensive both to make and to keep up in England. 
There is generally but one carriage-road to the house, and even the foot- 
paths cease with the iron fences of the pleasure-grounds. The English la- 
dies are not so afraid of setting their feet on wet grass as ours are. 

After many windings, the path brought me, under a most lovely leafy 
canopy, unexpectedly before the ivy-covered door of a little building, adjoin- 
ing to which, still more buried in the wood, was the gamekeeper's house. 
This door opened from within, and most enchanting was the view that it 
disclosed to us. We had entered a little open saloon, the isolated pillars of 
which were entirely covered with thick monthly roses ; — between them was 
seen a large aviary filled with parrots on the right, and on the left an equal- 
ly extensive habitation for canaries, goldfinches, and other small birds ; be- 
fore us lay an open grass-plat dotted with evergreens, and behind this a back- 
ground of high woods, through which small peeps at a distant village and a 
solitary church-tower had been cut with singular taste and skill. 

On this grass-plat, the keeper now called together perfect clouds of gold, 
silver, and pied pheasants, fowls, of exotic breeds, tame rooks, curious pi- 
geons, and odier birds that were accustomed to be fed here, and thronged 
together in the most gay and motley crowd. Their various manners and 
gestures, rendered more lively by their passionate eagerness, afforded an 
amusing spectacle. The behaviour of a gold pheasant who, like a beau of 
the old school, seemed trying to make his court to all the assembled hens 
with the most ludicrous struts and airs, was so excessively comic that my 

old B burst into an immoderate fit of laughter ; whereat the English 

servants, who are accustomed to observe an exterior of slavish reverence in 
the presence of their masters, looked at him with a consternation at his bold- 
ness, which amused me as much as the ' Pantalonnade' among the fowls. 

There are above five hundred gold and silver pheasants. They have all 
one wing cut as soon as they are hatched, which for ever prevents their 
flying. They inhabit these woods winter and summer, without wanting 
even the shelter of a shed, — so mild is this climate. 

Not to weary you, I omit the description of the second park, Short Grove, 
which had nothing remarkable to boast, and appeared much neglected. The 
house, park, hot-houses, &c, the former completely furnished, were to let 
for the moderate rent of four hundred a-year, — a very common custom here 
when the possessors are travelling. 

We should not like to imitate it ; while on the other hand, a part of our 
town-houses are almost always let, the proprietors inhabiting only the 
' bel etage.' This again appears very strange to the English, and certainly 
is extremely inconvenient, for the presence of several families in one house 
is not favourable either to order or cleanliness. 

The house-door at Short Grove was covered on the outside with looking- 
glass, — a very pretty idea : as you enter the house you have a beautiful pic- 
ture of the country. 

The great wealth of the landholders of England must always strike peo- 
ple from the Continent, where the landed proprietors are the poorest class, 
and the least protected by laws and institutions. Here everything conspires 
for their advantage. It is very difficult for the fundholder to acquire the free 
and full possession of land. Almost the whole soil is the property of the 
aristocracy, who generally let it only on lease ; so that when a great man. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 



33 



calls a village his, this does not mean, as with us, merely that he has the 
lordship ( Ob er her rs chaff t) over it, but that every house is his absolute pro- 
perty ; and only granted to the actual inhabitants for a certain time. You 
may conceive what enormous and ever increasing revenues this must bring 
them, in a country where trade and population are continually on the in- 
crease ; and may admire with me the concert and address with which this 
aristocracy has contrived for centuries to turn all the institutions .of the 
country to its own advantage. 

The free sale of a portion of land is attended by many difficult conditions, 
and at so high a price that it is out of the reach of small capitalists, who 
find it more advantageous to hire it on lease. Leases here are, howevei', of 
a very different nature from ours. The piece of land is let to the tenant for 
ninety-nine years on payment of a certain yearly rent, which varies from a 
few shillings to five and ten pounds yearly per foot of the frontage, if it be 
for building on ; in large portions, it is so much per acre. The tenant now 
does with it what he likes, builds where he pleases, lays out gardens, plea- 
sure-grounds, and so on: but after the lapse of the ninety-nine years, the 
whole reverts just as it stands, sound and tight, to the family of the m-iginal 
lord of the soil : nay more ; the tenant must keep the house in perfect re- 
pair, and paint it every seven years. During his allotted term he may sell 
or let it to others, but of course only up to that period when it reverts to the 
original proprietor. Almost all the country-houses, villas, &c, that one 
sees, thus belong to great land-owners ; and although the tenants at the ex- 
piration of their term generally re-establish this sort of precarious property 
in them, yet they must double or treble their rent, according to the increased 
value of land, or the improvements they themselves have made upon it. 
Even the greater part of London belongs, on such terms, to certain noble- 
men, of whom Lord Grosvenor, for instance, is said to derive above 
100,000Z. a year from his ground-rents. Scarcely a single inhabitant of 
London, therefore, except a few members of the high aristocracy, is the real 
owner of his house. Even Rothschild's is not his own : and when a man 
buys one, as it is called, people ask him for how long. The price varies 
according as the house is taken at first hand, commonly then for a rent ; or 
at second or third, and then more usually for a sum of money. The 
greater part of the profits of industry thus inevitably falls into the hands of 
the aristocracy, and necessarily increases the enormous influence which they 
already exercise over the government of the country.* 

London, October 21s/. 

This afternoon I got home safe and well through the incessant rain, re- 
freshed myself with a good dinner at the Club, and in the evening, let me 
tell you, won just six times my travelling expenses. I am well and in good 
spirits, and find that I want nothing but you. 

Let me finish my letter at so favourable a conjuncture. It is already 
swelled to a packet. 

Ever your faithfully devoted L . 

* The reader will see that there is great confusion in this account of the state and 
tenure of landed property in England, which, indeed, it is extremely difficult to make 
a foreigner understand. It cannot be too often repeated, that no attempt is made to 
corrcjct the author's impressions or statements. To do so, is not to translate but to 
forge. The mistakes and misrepresentations are numerous, — almost as numerous as 
those in English works on Germany, which is saying a good deal. — Tiiansl. 

5 



34 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

LETTER V.* 

London, Nov. 20th, 1826. 
Beloved Friend, 

I advise travellers never to take servants out of their fatherland into 
strange countries, especially if they imagine they shall save by it, — nowa- 
days always a prime object. This piece of economy belongs to the class 
of those, one of which costs more than, four pieces of extravagance ; besides 
which, one hangs a load round one's neck which is burthensome in various 
ways. 

These wise reflections are excited in me by my old valet, who seems in- 
clined to fall into the English spleen because he finds so many daily diffi- 
culties here; — above all, in getting soup for his dinner, the thought of which 
beloved aliment of his home calls tears into his eyes. He reminds me of 
the Prussian soldiers, who, amid streams of Champagne, beat the French 
peasants for not setting Stettin beer before them. 

True it is that the English of the middle classes, accustomed to substan- 
tial flesh diet, are not acquainted with the Northern broths and soups : what 
goes under that name in England is an expensive extract of all sorts of pep- 
pers and spices from both Indies, like that brewed in a witches' cauldron. 
The face of my faithful liegeman, at the first spoonful of this compound he 
put into his mouth, would have been worthy to figure in Peregrine Pickle's 
antique repast, and turned my anger into loud laughter. Yet I see before- 
hand that his devotion to me will be wrecked on this rock ; for our Germans 
are, and ever will be, curious beings ; holding longer than any others to the 
accustomed, — be it faith, love or soup. 

In the absence of society, the various Clubs, (to which, contrary to for- 
mer custom, a stranger can now gain admittance,) are a very agreeable re- 
source. Our ambassador introduced me into two of them, — the United 
Service Club, into which no foreigners are admitted except ambassadors and 
military men, — the latter of the rank of stafl-officers : and the Traveller's 
Club, into which every foreigner of education, who has good introductions, 
is admitted ; though every three months he is made to undergo the some- 
what humiliating ceremony of requesting a fresh permission, to which he is 
held with almost uncivil severity. 

In Germany, people have as little notion of the elegance and comfort of 
Clubs, as of the rigorous execution of their laws which prevail here. 

All that luxury and convenience, without magnificence, demand, is here 
to be found in as great perfection as in the best private houses. The stairs 
and rooms are covered with fresh and handsome carpets, and rugs (sheep- 
skins with the wool nicely prepared and dyed of bright colours) are laid 
before the doors to prevent drafts; marble chimney-pieces, handsome look- 
ing-glasses (always of one piece, — a necessary part of solid English luxury), 
a profusion of furniture, &c. render every apartment extremely comfortable. 
Even scales, by which to ascertain one's weight daily — a strange taste of 
the English — are not wanting. The numerous servants are never seen but 
in shoes, and in the neatest livery or plain clothes ; and a porter is always 
at his post to take charge of great-coats and umbrellas. This latter article 
in England deserves attention, since umbrellas, which are unfortunately so 

* Some letters which contain only personaf anecdotes are here suppressed. I re- 
mark this only to account to my fair readers, — who must have been delighted at the 
punctuality with which the departed author devoted the close of every day to his ab- 
sent friend, — for a silence of twenty days Editoii. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 



35 



indispensable, are stolen in the most shameless manner, be it where it may, 
if you do not take particular care of them. This fact is so notorious that I 
must translate for your amusement a passage from a newspaper, relating to 
some Society for the encouragement of virtue, which was to award a prize 
for the most honourable action. " The choice," continues the author, 
" was become extremely difficult; and it was nearly determined to give the 
prize to an individual who had paid his tailor's bill punctually for several 
years ; when another was pointed out, who had twice sent home an um- 
brella left at his house. At this unheard-of act," adds the journalist, " the 
company first fell into mute wonder that so much virtue was still found in 
Israel ; but at length loud and enthusiastic applause left the choice no longer 
doubtful." 

In the elegant and well-furnished library there is also a person always 
at hand to fetch you the books you want. You find all the journals in a 
well-arranged reading-room; and in a small room for maps and charts,* a 
choice of the newest and best in their kind. This is so arranged that all 
the maps, rolled up, hang one over another on the wall, thus occupying but 
a small space ; and each is easily drawn down for use by a little loop in 
the centre. A pull at a loop at the side rolls up the map again by a very 
simple piece of mechanism. The name of each country is inscribed in such 
large letters on the mahogany staff* on which the map is rolled, that it may 
be read with ease across the room. By this contrivance a. great number of 
maps may be hung in a very small closet, and when wanted, may be found 
and inspected in a moment, without the slightest trouble, or derangement of 
the others. 

The table, — I mean the eating, — with most men the first thing, and with 
me not the last, — is generally prepared by a French cook, as well and as 
cheaply as it is possible to have it in London. As the Club provides the 
wines, and sells them again to each member, they are very drinkable and 
reasonable. But ' gourmands' must ever miss the finest wines, even at the 
best tables in London. This arises from the strange habit of the English 
(and these people, too, stick faster to their habits than an oyster to its shell,) 
of getting their wines from London wine-merchants, instead of importing 
them from the places where they grow, as we do. Now these wine-mer- 
chants adulterate their wine to such a degree, that one who was lately pro- 
secuted for having some thousand bottles of port and claret in his cellars 
which had not paid duty, proved that all this wine was manufactured by 
himself in London, and thus escaped the penalty. You may imagine, there- 
fore, what sort of brewage you often get under the high-sounding names of 
Champagne, Lafitte, &c. The dealers scarcely ever buy the very best 
which is to be had in the native lands of the several wines, for the obvious 
reason that they could make little or no profit of it ; at best they only use 
it to enable them to get oft* other wine of inferior quality. 

Excuse this wine-digression, which to you, who drink only water, cannot 
be very interesting; but you know I write for us both, and to me the sub- 
ject is I confess not unimportant. " Gem fuhre ich Wein im Munde." 

But let us back to our Clubs. 

The peculiarity of English manners may be much better observed here, 
at the first ' abord,' than in the great world, which is everywhere more or 
less alike ; whereas the same individuals, of whom it is in part composed, 

* I must remark, that ever since Prussia was promised a Charter, (Charte,) my de- 
parted friend, to be more accurate, made an orthographical distinction, spelling charts, 
Carte, and playing cards, Karte. — He hopes- this caution will not be thrown away. — 
Editor. 



36 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

show themselves here with much less restraint. la the first place, the 
stranger must admire the refinement of convenience with which English- 
men sit : it must be confessed that a man who is ignorant of the ingenious 
English chairs, of every form, and adapted to every degree of fatigue, in- 
disposition, or constitutional peculiarity, really loses a large share of earthly 
enjoyment. It is a positive pleasure even to see an Englishman sit, or ra- 
ther lie, in one of these couch-like chairs by the fire-side. A contrivance 
like a reading-desk attached to the arm, and furnished with a candlestick, 
is so placed before him, that with the slightest touch he can bring it nearer 
or further, push it to the right or the left, at pleasure. A curious machine, 
several of which stand around the large fire-place, receives one or both of 
his feet; and the hat on his head completes the enchanting picture of su- 
perlative comfort. 

This latter circumstance is the most difficult of imitation to a man brought 
up in the old school. Though he can never refrain from a provincial sort 
of shudder when he enters the brilliantly lighted saloon of the Club-house, 
where dukes, ambassadors and lords, elegantly dressed, are sitting at the 
card-tables, yet if he wishes to be ' fashionable' he must keep on his hat, 
advance to a party at whist, nod to one or two of his acquaintances : then 
carelessly taking up a newspaper, sink down on a sofa, and, not till after 
some time, 'nonchalament' throw down his hat (which perhaps has all the 
while been a horrid annoyance to him); or, if he stays but a few minutes, 
not take it off at all. 

The practice of half lying instead of sitting ; sometimes of lying at full 
length on the carpet at the feet of ladies ; of crossing one leg over the other 
in such a manner as to hold the foot in the hand ; of putting the hands in 
the arm-holes of the waistcoat, and so on, — are all things which have ob- 
tained in the best company and the most exclusive circles : it is therefore 
very possible that the keeping on the hat may arrive at the same honour. 
In this case it will doubtless find its way into Paris society, which, after 
being formerly aped by all Europe, now disdains not to ape the English, — 
sometimes grotesquely enough, — and, as is usual in such cases, often out- 
does its original. 

On the other hand, the English take it very ill of foreigners, if they re- 
prove a waiter who makes them wait, or brings one thing instead of another, 
or if they give their commands in a loud or lordly tone of voice ; though the 
English themselves often do this in their own country, and much more in 
ours, and though the dining-room of the Club is in fact only a more elegant 
sort of ' restauration,' where every man must pay his reckoning after he has 
dined. It is regarded not only as improper, but as unpleasant and offensive, 
if any one reads during dinner. ' It is not the fashion in England ; and, as I 
have this bad habit in a supreme degree, I have sometimes remarked satiri- 
cal signs of displeasure on the countenances of a few Islanders of the old 
school, who shook their heads as they passed me. One must be on one's 
guard, generally, to do things as little as possible unlike the English, and 
yet not to try to imitate them servilely in everything, for no race of men can 
be more intolerant. Most of them see with reluctance the introduction of 
any foreigner into their more private societies, and all regard it as a distin- 
guished favour and obligation conferred on us. 

But of all offences against English manners which a man can commit, the 
three following are the greatest : — to put his knife to his mouth instead of his 
fork ; to take up sugar or asparagus with his fingers ; or, above all, to spit any- 
where in a room. These are certainly laudable prohibitions, and well-bred 
people of all countries avoid such practices, — though even on these points 



IRELAND AND FRANCE, 37 

manners alter greatly ; for Marshal Richelieu detected an adventurer who 
passed himself off for a man of rank, by the single circumstance of his taking 
up olives with his fork and not with his fingers. The ridiculous thing is 
the amazing importance which is here attached to them. The last-named 
crime is so pedantically proscribed in England, that you might seek through 
all London in vain to find such a piece of furniture as a spitting-box. A 
Dutchman, who was very uncomfortable for the want of one, declared with 
great indignation, that an Englishman's only spitting-box was his stomach. 
These things are, I repeat, more than trivial, but the most important rules of 
behaviour in foreign countries almost always regard trivialities. Had I, for 
example, to give a few universal rules to a young traveller, I should seriously 
counsel him thus : — In Naples, treat the people brutally ; in Rome, be na- 
tural ; in Austria, don't talk politics ; in France, give yourself no airs ; in 
Germany, a great many ; and in England, don't spit. With these rules, the 
young man would get on very well. What one must justly admire is the 
well-adapted arrangement of every thing belonging to the economy of life 
and of all public establishments in England, as well as the systematical 
rigour with which what has once been determined on is unalterably followed 
up. In Germany, all good institutions soon fall asleep, and new brooms 
alone sweep clean ; here it is quite otherwise. On the other hand, every 
thing is not required of the same person, but exactly so much, and no more, 
as falls within his department. The treatment of servants is as excellent as 
their performance of their duties. Each has his prescribed field of activity ; 
in which, however, the strictest and most punctual execution of orders is 
required of him, and in any case of neglect the master knows whom he has 
to call to account. At the same time, the servants enjoy a reasonable free- 
dom, and have certain portions of time allotted to them, which their master 
carefully respects. The whole treatment of the serving classes is much 
more decorous, and combined with more ' egards,' than with us ; but then 
they are so entirely excluded from all familiarity, and such profound respect 
is exacted from them, that they appear to be considered rather as machines 
than as beings of the same order. This, and their high wages, are no doubt 
the causes that the servants really possess more external dignity than any 
other class in England, relatively to their station. 

In many cases it would be a very pardonable blunder in a foreigner to 
take the valet for the lord, especially if he happened to imagine that courtesy 
and a good address were the distinguishing marks of a man of quality. 
This test would be by no means applicable in England, where these advan- 
tages are not to be found among the majority of persons of the higher classes ; 
though there are some brilliant exceptions, and their absence is often re- 
deemed by admirable and solid qualities. 

In the men, indeed, their arrogance, often amounting to rudeness, and 
their high opinion of themselves, do not sit so ill ; but in the women, it is 
as disgusting and repulsive, as, in some other of their countrywomen, the 
vain effort to ape continental grace and vivacity. 

I once before praised the admirable spirit of adaptation and arrangement 
which pervades all establishments here. As a sample, I will give you the 
organization of the card-room in the Traveller's Club-house. This is not 
properly a gaming club, but, as its name denotes, one expressly for travellers. 
Such only can become actual members of it as have travelled a eeriain pre- 
scribed number of miles on the Continent, #r have made yet more distant 
expeditions. In spite of this, one does not perceive that they are become less 
English, which, however, I do not quarrel with. At the Travellers' Club, 
then, short whist and ecartc are played very high, but no hazard. 



38 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

In our Casinos, ' Ressources,' and so on, a man who wishes to play must 
first laboriously seek out a party; and if the tables are full, may have to wait 
hours till one is vacant. Here it is a law that every one who comes may 
take his seat at any table at which a rubber has just ended, when he who has 
played two consecutive rubbers must give up his place. It is pleasant, too, 
to a man who has lost, and fancies that the luck goes with the place, to quit 
it and seek better fortune in another. 

In the centre of the room stands a ' bureau' at which is posted a clerk, who 
rings whenever a waiter is wanted; brings the bill;* and, if any contested 
point occur, fetches the classical authorities on whist; for never is the slight- 
est offence against the rules of the game suffered to pass without the inflic- 
tion of the annexed punishment. This is rather annoying to a man who 
plays only for amusement ; but yet it is a wise plan, and forms good players. 
The same clerk distributes the markers to the players to obviate the great 
annoyance of meeting with a bad payer, tire Club is the universal payer. 
Actual money does not make its appearance, but every man who sits down 
to play receives a little basket of markers of various forms, the value of which 
is inscribed upon them, and which the clerk enters in his book; as often as 
he loses, he asks for more. Each player reckons with the clerk, and either 
proves his loss, or, if he has won, delivers up the markers. In either case 
he receives a card containing a statement of the result, and the duplicate of 
the reckoning in the account-book. 

As soon as any one is indebted more than a hundred pounds, he must pay 
it in the following morning to the clerk ; and every man who has any de- 
mands can claim his money at any time. 

None but a nation so entirely commercial as the English can be expected 
to attain to this perfection of methodizing and arrangement. In no other 
country are what are here emphatically called 'habits of business' carried so 
extensively into social and domestic life ; the value of time, offorder, of des- 
patch, of inflexible routine, nowhere so well understood. This is the great 
key to the most striking national characteristics. The quantity of material 
objects produced and accomplished — theivork done — in England, exceeds 
all that man ever effected. The causes and the qualities which have pro- 
duced these results have as certainly given birth to the dulness, the contract- 
ed views, the routine habits of thought as well as of action, the inveterate 
prejudices, the unbounded desire for, and deference to, wealth, which charac- 
terize the mass of Englishmen. 

It were much to be wished that in our German cities we imitated the or- 
ganization of English Clubs, which would be very practicable as to the es- 
sentials, though our poverty would compel us to dispense with many of their 
luxuries. In this case we ought to repay the English like for like, and not 
prostrate ourselves in puerile slavish admiration of their money and their 
name ; but while we treated them with all civility, and even with more cour- 
tesy than they show to us, yet let them see that Germans are masters of their 
own house, particularly as many of them only come among us either to 
economize, or to form connexions with people of rank, from which their 
own station at home excluded them, or to have the satisfaction of showing 
us that in all arrangements for physical comfort we are still barbarians com- 
pared with them.f 

• Redmung. — Account, reckoning-, bill. The reader, if he happen to know the fact, 
may apply the right word Transl. 

f The author's feelings towards Englishmen are evidently so bitter, that his testi- 
mony must be received with great allowance. On the other hand, it will be confessed 
by all who are not blinded by intense self-complacency and insular conceit, that it is 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 39 

It is indeed inconceivable, and a proof that it is only necessary to treat us 
contemptuously in order to obtain our reverence, that, as I have remarked, 
the mere name of Englishman is, with us, equivalent to the highest title. 
Many a person, who would scarcely get admission into very inferior circles 
in England, where the whole of society, down to the very lowest classes, is 
so stiffly aristocratical, in the various states of Germany is received at Court 
and fete by the first nobility; every act of coarseness and ill-breeding is set 
down as a trait of charming English originality, till perhaps, by some acci- 
dent, a really respectable Englishman comes to the place, and people learn 
with astonishment that they have been doing all this honour to an ensign 
• on half pay,' or a rich tailor or shoemaker. An individual of this rank is, 
however, generally, at least civil, but the impertinence of some of the higher 
classes surpasses all belief. 

I know that in one of the largest towns of Germany, a prince of the royal 
house, distinguished for his frank, chivalrous courtesy, and his amiable cha- 
racter, invited an English Viscount, who was but just arrived, and had not 
yet been presented to him, to a hunting-party; to which His Lordship re- 
plied, that he could not accept the invitation, as the prince ivas perfectly 
unknown to him. 

It is true, that no foreigner will ever have it in his power so to requite a 
similar civility in England, where a grandee considers an invitation to dinner 
(they are very liberal of invitations to routs and soirees, for the sake of till- 
ing their rooms) as the most signal honour he can confer upon even a dis- 
tinguished foreigner, — an honour only to be obtained by long acquaintance, 
or by very powerful letters of introduction. But if by any miracle such a 
ready attention were to be paid in England, it would be impossible to find a 
single man of any pretensions to breeding, on the whole Continent, who 
would make such a return as this boorish lord did.* 

November 21st. 

I called yesterday morning on L to execute your commission, but 

did not find him at home. Instead of him, I found to my great joy a letter 
from you, which I was so impatient to read, that I set myself down in his 
room, and read it attentively two or three times. Your affection, which 
strives to spare me everything disagreeable, and dwells only upon those 
subjects which can give me pleasure, I acknowledge most gratefully. But 
you must not spare me more than you are convinced you can do without 
detriment to our common interests. You estimate my letters far more high- 
ly than they deserve ; but you may imagine that, in my eyes, it is a very 
amiable fault in you to overvalue me thus. Love paints the smallest merit 
in magic colours. I will, however, do myself the justice to believe that 
you, who have had such ample opportunities of knowing me, may find in 
me qualities which shrink from the rude touch of the world. This con- 
soled me, — but your expression " that all you wrote appeared to you so in- 
coherent, that you thought the grief of parting had weakened your intel- 
lects," gave me great pain. Do I then want phrases ? How much more 
delightful is that natural, confidential talk, which flows on without con- 
extremely rare to find a foreigner of any country, who has encountered English people 
either abroad or at home, without having' his most honest allowable self-love wounded 
in a hundred ways. — Transl. 

* Let me here remark, that those who judge of England only by their visit to it in 
1814, form extremely erroneous notions. That was a moment of enthusiasm, a bound- 
less joy of the whole nation at its deliverance from its most dreaded enemy, which ren- 
dered it peculiarly kind and amiable towards those who had contributed to its destruc- 
tion. 



40 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

straint and without effort, and therefore expresses itself admirably. I am 
particularly delighted at your sentiments concerning what I tell you; they 
are ever exactly such as I expect and share. 

Accompany your friend to the capital : — it will amuse you, and at the 
same time you will find many opportunities of promoting our interests. 
4 Les absens ont tort;' never forget that. I must disapprove B 'a levi- 
ty. He has no solicitude about his reputation, though he be in fact an an- 
gel of virtue and benevolence ; he who cares not what is said of him, — 
perhaps even laughs at it, — will soon find that the malignity of men has left 
him in the same condition as to reputation as Peter Schlemil was with re- 
gard to his shadow. At first he thought it nothing to forego a thing so un- 
substantial : but in the end he could scarcely endure existence without it. 
Only in the deepest solitude, far from all the world, striding restlessly with 
his seven-league boots from the north pole to the south, and living for sci- 
ence alone, did he find some tranquillity and peace. At the conclusion of 
your letter I see but too clearly that melancholy gains the upper hand, — 
and I could say something on that subject too, — ' mais it faut du courage.' 
In every life there are periods of trial, moments when the bitterest drops in 
the cup must be drained. If the sun do but illumine the evening, we will 
not murmur at the noontide heat. 

But enough of these serious subjects : let me now turn your attention 
from them, by leading you to the Haymarket Theatre, which I lately visit- 
ed, when the celebrated Liston enchanted the public for the hundred-and- 
second time in Paul Pry, a sort of foolish lout. The actor, who is said to 
have made a fortune of six thousand a-year, is one of those whom I should 
call natural comic actors, of the same class as were Unzelmann and Wurm 
in Berlin, and Biisenberg and Dbring in Dresden ; men who, without any 
profound study of their art, excite laughter by a certain drollery of manner 
peculiar to themselves, an inexhaustible humour, ' qui coule de source ;' 
though frequently in private life they are hypochondriacal, as it is said to be 
the case with Liston. 

The notorious Madame Vestris, who formerly made 4 furore,' was also 
there. She is somewhat ' passee,' but still very fascinating on the stage. 
She is an excellent singer, and still better actor, and a greater favourite of 
the English public even than Liston. Her great celebrity, however, rests 
on the beauty of her legs, which are become a standing article in the thea- 
trical criticisms of the newspapers, and are often displayed by her in man's 
attire. The grace and the exhaustless spirit and wit of her acting are also 
truly enchanting, though she sometimes disgusts one by her want of mo- 
desty, and coquettes too much with the audience. It may truly be said in 
every sense of the words, that Madame Vestris belongs to all Europe. Her 
father was an Italian ; her mother a German and a good pianoforte player ; 
her husband, of the illustrious dancing family of France, and herself an 
Englishwoman: any chasms in her connexion with other European nations 
are more than filled up by hundreds of the most ' marquant' lovers. She 
also speaks several languages with the utmost fluency. In the character of 
the German ' broom girl' she sings 

" Ach, du lieber Augustin," 

with a perfect pronunciation, and with a very ' piquant' air of assurance. 

To-day I dined with our ambassador. This prevented my visiting the 
theatre, which I have too much neglected. I have resolved to attend it with 
more constancy, in order that I may gradually give you a tolerably perfect 
report of it, though in detached descriptions. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 41 

We were quite ' en petit comite,' and the company unusually animated 
and merry. We had a certain great ' gourmand' among us, who took a great 

deal of joking, ' sans en perdre un coup de dent.' At last Prince E 

told him that whenever he went to purgatory his punishment would un- 
doubtedly be to see the blessed eat, while he was kept lasting. *.*.** 

Lord was there too. lie treats me in the most friendly manner to my 

face, but, I am told, loses no opportunity of injuring me in society. * * 

A man of warmer heart would have spoken to me face to face of this 
supposed wrong. ' Diplomates,' however, have too much fishes' blood in 
their organization. * * * * * * 

Happily, I can laugh at all such ' menees :' for a man who seeks nothing 
and fears little, who interests himself in the great world only in so far as it 
affords him opportunities for making experimental'' observations on himself 
and others ; who is, as to necessaries at least, independent, and has a k\v 
but faithful friends, — such a man it is difficult seriously to injure. Expe- 
rience too has cooled me; — my blood no longer flows with such uncontrol- 
lable impetuosity ; while my lightheadedness has not deserted me, still less 
the capacity of loving intensely. I therefore enjoy life better than in the 
bloom of youth, and would not exchange my present feelings for that early 
tumultuous vehemence. Nay, in such a frame of mind, I feel not the least 
dread of old age, and am persuaded that when that period of life arrives, it 
will turn to us many a bright and beautiful side whose existence we suspect 
not, and which those only never find who want to remain youthful for ever. 

I lately met with some pretty English verses which I translated, after my 
fashion, with a thought of you, my best friend, who too often regret depart- 
ing youth. These are the delightful lines : 

1st gleich bie triibe Wange bleich, 
Das Auge nicht mehr hell, 
Und nahet schon das ernste Reich, 
Wo Jugend fliehet schnell! 
Doch lachelt Dir die Wange noch, 
Das Auge kennt die Thrane noch, 
.Das Herz schlagt noch so warm und frei 
Als in des Lebens grtinstem Mai. 
So denk' denn nicht, dass nur die Jugend 
Und Schonheit Segeu leiht — 
Zeit lehrt die Seele schonre Tugend, 
In Jahren treuer Zartlichkeit. 
Und selbst wenn einst die Nacht von oben 
Verdunkelnd Deine Brust umfangt, 
Wird noch durch Liebeshand gehoben 
Dein Haupt zur ew'gen Ruh' gesenkt. 
O, so auch blinkt der Abendstern, 
1st gleich dahin der Sonne Licht, 
Noch sanft und warm aus holier Fern', 
Und Tages-Glanz entbehrst Du nicht — * 

Yes, my beloved Julia, thus has time taught us, in years of tenderness, 
that nothing can have so genuine a value as that. We have now before us 
an evening star, whose mild light is far more delightful than that mid-day 
sun which often rather scorches than warms. 

I drove home with L , and we had a long conversation by the snug 

fireside on the affairs of our country. * * * * 

L is very kind to me, and I am doubly attached to him ; first, for his 

* English-German readers will probably find the original of these lines without diffi- 
culty. — Tbassl. 

6 



42 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

own amiable and honourable character ; secondly, for the sake of his excel- 
lent father, to whom we owe more real gratitude than to , though he had 

no other motive than his own impartial love of justice. 

November 23<Z. 

A strange custom in England is the continual intrusion of the newspapers 
into the affairs of private life. A man of any distinction not only sees the 
most absurd details concerning him dragged before the public, — such as 
where he dined, what evening party he attended, and so forth, (which 
many foreigners read with the greatest self-complacency,) — but if anything 
really worth telling happens to him, it is immediately made public without 
shame or scruple. Personal hostility has thus ' beau jeu,' as well as the 
desire of making profitable friends. Many use the newspapers for the pub- 
lication of articles to their own advantage, which they send themselves. The 
foreign embassies cultivate this branch with great assiduity. It is easy to 
see what formidable weapons the press thus furnishes. Fortunately, how- 
ever, the poison brings its antidote with it. This consists in the indiffer- 
ence with which the public receives such communications. An article in a 
newspaper after which a Continental would not show himself for three 
months, here excites at most a momentary laugh, and the next day is for- 
gotten. 

About a month ago the papers made themselves extremely merry about 
the duel of a noble lord here ; who, according to their representation of the 
matter, had not cut a very heroic figure. They made the most offensive 
remarks, and drew the most mortifying inferences as to the calibre of his 
valour ; and all this had not the smallest perceptible effect in disabling him 
from presenting himself in society with as much ease and unconcern as 
ever. They have tried to give me too a ' coup fourre.' 
But I have served under an old soldier, and learned from him always to 
have the first and loudest laugh at myself, and not to spare an inoffensive 
jest at myself and others. This is the only safe way of meeting ridicule in 
the world : if you appear sensitive or embarrassed, then indeed the poison 
works ; otherwise it evaporates like cold water on a red-hot stone. This 
the English understand to perfection. 

This evening I spent, true to my determination, in Drury Lane, where, 
to my infinite astonishment, old Braham appeared, still as first singer, with 
the same applause with which I saw him, even then an old man, perform 
the same part for his own benefit the day before my departure from England, 
twelve years ago. I found little difference in his singing, except that he 
shouted rather more violently, and made rather more ' roulades' in order to 
conceal the decline of his voice. He is a Jew, and I am firmly convinced 
the everlasting one,* for he does not seem to grow old at all. ' Au reste,' 
he is the genuine representative of the English style of singing, and, in po- 
pular songs especially, the enthusiastically adored idol of the public. One 
cannot deny to him great power of voice and rapidity of execution, and he 
is said to have a thorough knowledge of music : but a more abominable 
style it is impossible to conceive. 

The Prima Donna was Miss Paton, a very agreeable, but not a first-rate 
singer. She is well-made, and not ugly, and is a great favourite with the 
public. What would appear extraordinary among us, — she is married to 
Lord W L , whose name she bears in her own family and in pri- 

* The traditional personage whom we call the Wandering Jew, the Germans call 
ckr ewige Jude, the eternal or everlasting Jew. — Tkansi. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 43 

vate.* On the stage, however, she is Miss Paton again, and paid as such, 
which is not unacceptable to her lord. 

The most striking thing to a foreigner in English theatres is the unheard- 
of coarseness and brutality of the audiences. The consequence of this is 
that the higher and more civilized classes go only to the Italian opera, and 
very rarely visit their' national theatre. Whether this be unfavourable or 
otherwise to the stage, I leave others to determine. 

English freedom here degenerates into the rudest license, and it is not 
uncommon in the midst of the most affecting part of. a tragedy, or the most 
charming 'cadenza' of a singer, to hear some coarse expression shouted 
from the galleries in stentor voice. This is followed, according to the taste 
of the bystanders, either by loud laughter and approbation, or by the casti- 
gation and expulsion of the offender. 

Whichever turn the thing takes, you can hear no more of what is passing 
on the stage, where actors and singers, according to ancient usage, do not 
suffer themselves to be interrupted by such occurrences, but declaim or 
warble away, ' comme si rien n'etait.' And such things happen not once, 
but sometimes twenty times, in the course of a performance, and amuse 
many of the audience more than that does. It is also no rarity for some one 
to throw the fragments of his ' goute,' which do not always consist of orange- 
peels alone, without the smallest ceremony on the heads of the people in 
the pit, or to shail them with singular dexterity into the boxes ; while others 
hang their coats and waistcoats over the railing of the gallery, and sit in 
shirt-sleeves ; in short, all that could be devised for the better excitement of 
a phlegmatic Harmonie Society of the workmen in Berlin, under the re- 
nowned Wisotsky, is to be found in the national theatre of Britain. 

Another cause for the absence of respectable families is the resort of hun- 
dreds of those unhappy women with whom London swarms. They are to 
be seen of every degree, from the lady who spends a splendid income, and 
has her own box, to the wretched beings who wander houseless in the 
streets. Between the acts they fill the large and handsome • foyers,' and 
exhibit their boundless effrontery in the most revolting manner. 

It is most strange that in no country on earth is this afflicting and humi- 
liating spectacle so openly exhibited as in the religious and decorous Eng- 
land. The evil goes to such an extent, that in the theatres it is often diffi- 
cult to keep off these repulsive beings, especially when they are drunk, 
which is not seldom the case. They beg in the most shameless manner, 
and a pretty, elegantly dressed girl does not disdain to take a shilling or a 
sixpence, which she instantly spends in a glass of rum, like the meanest 
beggar. And these are the scenes, I repeat, which are exhibited in the na- 
tional theatre of England, where the highest dramatic talent of the country 
should be developed; where immortal artists like Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, 
Miss O'Neil, have enraptured the public by their genius, and where such 
actors as Kean, Kemble, and Young, still adorn the stage. 

Is not this — to say nothing of the immorality — in the highest degree low 
and undignified ? It is wholly inconsistent with any real love of art, or con- 
ception of its office and dignity. The turbulent scenes I have described 
above scarcely ever arise out of anything connected with the performance, 
but have almost always some source quite foreign to it, and no way relating 
to the stage. 

Farewell! Ever your L . 

* It is true that our charming Sontag, the queen of song, has lately done nearly the 
same thing, having contracted a left-handed marriage with Count R Editob. 



44 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

LETTER VI. 

London, Nov. 25th, 1826. 
Beloved, 

It is sometimes a perfect want with me to spend a day entirely alone in 
my own room. I pass it in a sort of dreamy brooding. I go over the past 
and the future, — all that I have felt and suffered, — till, by the mixture of so 
many colours, one misty grey tint overspreads the whole ; and the disso- 
nances of life melt away at length, in a soft objectless melancholy. 

The barrel-organs which resound day and night in every street, and are 
at other times insufferable, are favourable to such a state of mind. They too 
mingle a hundred different airs, till all music loses itself in an indistinct 
dreamy ringing in the ears. 

A much more entertaining thing is another sort of street performance, — 
a genuine national comedy. It afforded me great amusement from my win- 
dow, and is well worth a somewhat particular description. 

The hero of this drama is Punch, — the English Punch, — perfectly differ- 
ent from the Italian Pulcinella. I send you a faithful portrait of him in the 
act of beating his wife to death; — for he is the most godless droll that ever I 
met with; and as completely without conscience as the wood out of which 
he is made; — a little, too, the type of the nation he represents. 

Punch has, like his namesake, something of rum, lemon and sugar in 
him ; he is strong, sour and sweet, and withal pretty indifferent to the con- 
fusion he causes. He is, moreover, the most absolute egotist the earth con- 
tains, ' et ne doute jamais de rien.' He conquers everything by his invin- 
cible merriment and humour, laughs at the laws, at men, and at the devil 
himself; and shows in part what the Englishman is, in part what he wishes 
to be, in one composite picture ; — on the native side, selfishness, persever- 
ance and high spirit, and, wherever it is called for, reckless determination; — 
on the foreign, unconquerable levity, and ever ready wit. But allow me to 
paint Punch to you by his own proper words, and to take my further ac- 
count of him from his biography. 

As a descendant of Pulcinella of Acerra, he is, in the first place, unques- 
tionably a nobleman of ancient stock. Harlequin, Clown, the German Cas- 
perle and others are his near of kin ; — but he, for his great audacity, stands 
best as head of the family. Pious, alas ! he is not : being a true English- 
man, he doubtless goes to church on Sundays; though, may be, would beat 
any parson to death who bored him with attempts to convert him. It. is not 
to be denied that Punch is a wild fellow, — no very moral personage, and 
not made of wood for nothing. No man can be better fitted for a boxer, — 
other men's hits lie feels not, and his own are irresistible, With that, he is 
a true Turk in his small respect for human life ; endures no contradiction, 
and fears not the devil himself. On the other hand, we can but admire his 
great qualities in many respects. His admirable insensibility, and his alrea- 
dy-commended invariable good humour; his high heroic egotism; his unal- 
terable self-complacency; his exhaustless wit, and the consummate cunning 
with which he gets himself out of every scrape, and triumphs victoriously 
over every antagonist, — throws a bright lustre over all the little freedoms 
which he is apt to take with human life. In him has not inaptly been ob- 
served a compound of Richard the Third and Falstaff. Even in his outward 
man he unites the crooked legs and hump-back of Richard, with the portly 
rotundity of Falstaff ; to which are added the long nose and the fiery black 
eyes of Italy. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 45 

His dwelling is a box, with suitable internal decorations, set on four 
poles, — a theatre which can be erected in a few seconds in any place ; a dra- 
pery falling over the poles, or legs, conceals Punch's soul, which animates 
the puppets and lends them the needful words. The drama in which he 
daily appears in the streets, varies, therefore, with the talents of the person 
who acts as interpreter between Punch and the public. The course of the in- 
cidents is however always essentially the same, and pretty nearly as follows : 

As the curtain rises, Punch is heard behind the scenes trolling the French 
ballad ' Malbrooke s'en va- t- en guerre,' and presently appears dancing, and 
in high good humour, and in droll verses tells the spectators what manner 
of humour he is of. He calls himself a gay merry fellow, who loves to give 
a joke, but is not very ready to take one ; and if he is ever gentle, it is only 
towards the fair sex. With his money he is frank and free ; and his grand 
object is to laugh his whole life long, and to grow as fat as he can. He de- 
clares himself a great admirer and seducer of the girls, and, as long as he 
can get it, a friend of good cheer ; when he cannot, however, he can live on 
cheese-parings, and if he die — why then there's no more to be said, than 
that's all over, and there's an end of Punch and the play. (This latter 
avowal unquestionably smells a little of atheism.) 

After this monologue he calls behind the scene for Judy, his young wife, 
who will not come, but at last sends her dog instead. Punch strokes and 
caresses him, but the spiteful cur seizes him by the nose, and holds him 
fast, till after a laughable fight, and various rough jokes of the not too dis- 
creet Punch, he at last beats off the dog and gives him a sound drubbing. 

His neighbour Scaramouch, hearing the noise, here enters with a large 
stick, and calls Punch to account why he beat Judy's favourite dog, " that 
never bit anybody." " And I never beat a dog," replied Punch; "but," 
continues he, " what have you there in your hand, my dear Scaramouch ?" 
" Oh, nothing but a fiddle : will you hear the tone of it? Do but come and 
hear what a fine instrument it is." " Thank ye, thank ye, my good Scara- 
mouch," replies Punch modestly, " I can distinguish the tone of it very well 
here." Scaramouch, however, is not to be so put off, and while he dances 
about to the sound of his own singing, and flourishes his stick, he gives 
Punch, as if by accident, a great knock on the head. Punch affects not to 
heed it, but begins to dance too, and watching his opportunity suddenly 
snatches the stick out of Scaramouch's hand, and in a trice gives him such 
a blow with it that poor Scaramouch's head rolls down at his feet, — for 
where Punch lays about him the grass does not grow. "Ha! ha!" cries 
he, laughing, " did you hear the fiddle, my good Scaramouch ? "What a fine 
tone it has ! As long as you live, my lad, you'll never hear a finer. But 
where is my Judy 1 My sweet Judy, why don't you come." 

Mernwhile Punch has hidden the body of Scaramouch behind the curtain, 
and Judy, the ' feminine' pendant of her husband, with the same monstrous 
nose, enters. A comically tender scene ensues, after which Punch asks 
for his child; Judy goes to fetch it, and Punch breaks forth into an ecstatic 
monologue on his happiness as a husband and father. The little monster 
arrives, and now the parents can hardly contain themselves for joy, and lav- 
ish upon it the tenderest names and caresses. Judy, however, called away 
by her household duties, soon departs, and leaves the infant in its father's 
arms, who somewhat awkwardly tries to play the nurse and to dandle the 
child, which begins to cry piteously, and to behave very naughtily. Punch 
at first tries to soothe it, but soon grows impatient, beats it, and, as it screams 
all the more violently, he flies into a rage, and throws it out of the window, 
with curses, plump into the street, where it falls among the spectators and 



46 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

breaks its neck. Punch leans over the edge of the stage and looks after it, 
makes a few grimaces, shakes his head, and begins to laugh, and then dances 
about, singing merrily. 

Meantime Judy returns, and asks with alarm for her darling. " The 
child is gone to sleep," replies Punch carelessly ; however, after a long in- 
vestigation he is forced to confess that while he was playing with llim, he 
let him fall out of the window. Judy is out of herself, tears her hair, and 
overwhelms her cruel tyrant Avith the most dreadful reproaches. In vain 
does he try to soothe her; she will not hear him, and runs away uttering 
vehement threats. Punch -holds his belly for laughter, dances about, and for 
very wantonness, beats time with his own head upon the walls. But Judy 
now comes behind him with a broomstick and belabours him with all her 
might. 

At first he gives her good words, promises never to throw another child 
out of the window ; begs her, however, not to take the joke so seriously ; 
— but finding that nothing will avail, he loses his patience at last, and con- 
cludes the affair as with Scaramouch ; — he beats poor Judy to death. 
" Now," says he drily, "our quarrel i3 over, dear Judy, and if you are sa- 
tisfied, so am I. Come, stand up again, Judy. Oh, don't sham, this is 
only one of your tricks. What, you won't get up? Well, then, off with 
you !" So saying, he flings her after her child into the street. 

He does not even trouble himself to look after her, but bursting into one 
of his usual fits of loud laughter, cries out, " 'Tis a fine piece of luck to 
lose a wife !" 

In the second act we find Punch at a rendezvous with his mistress Polly, 
to whom he pays his court, not in the most refined manner, and assures her 
that she alone can drive away all his cares, and that if he had as many wives, 
as Solomon, he could kill them all for her sake. A courtier and friend of 
Polly's then pays him a visit ; this time he does not kill his man, but only 
thrashes him well : he is then ' ennuye,' and declares that the weather be- 
ing fine he will take a ride. A wild horse is brought, upon which he ca- 
pers about for some time in a ludicrous fashion ; but at last, from the dread- 
ful plunging of the untameable animal, is thrown. He calls out for help, 
and happily his friend the doctor happens to be passing, and comes imme- 
diately. Punch lies like dead, and groans piteously. The doctor tries to 
tranquillize him, and feels his pulse : Punch, to be short, makes so uncivil 
a return for the doctor's attentions, that the latter exclaims, " Here, Master 
Punch, I bring you a wholesome medicine, the only one fit for you," and 
begins to thump him soundly with his gold-headed cane. 

" Oh dear J" cries Punch, " many thanks to you ; I want none of your 
physic, it gives me the headache." " Ah, that's only because you have 
taken it in too small doses," says the doctor ; take a little more, and it 
will cure you." 

Punch at last feigns himself conquered, falls down exhausted, and begs 
for mercy ; but when the credulous doctor bends down over him, Punch 
darts upon him like lightning, wrests the stick out of his hand and lays 
about him as usual. 

" Now," cries he, " you must take a little of your charming physic, — 
only a little, respected friend ; — there — there !" 

" Oh Lord, you will kill me !" cries the doctor. 

" Not worth talking of — only what's usual — doctors always die when 
they take their own physic. Come, only one last pill :" and so saying, 
the ruthless Punch runs him through the body with the point of his stick. 
The doctor dies. Punch, laughing, exclaims, " Now, my good friend, 
cure yourself if you can." {Exit, singing and dancing. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 47 

After other adventures, which have almost all the same tragical end, jus- 
tice is at length awake, and the constable is sent to arrest Punch. He finds 
•him, as usual, in the highest glee, and just busied, as he says, in making 
music with the help of a dustman's bell (a very ' naif confession of the 
musical capacity of the nation.) 

The dialogue is brief and important.* It ends with the constable show- 
ing Punch the warrant for his arrest : "And," says Punch, " I have a war- 
rant for you, which I will soon execute." Hereupon he seizes the bell, 
which he has held concealed behind him, and gives the constable such a blow 
on the occiput, that, like his predecessors, he falls lifeless ; whereupon Punch 
springs oft* with a 'capriole,' and is heard singing behind the scenes. 

The magistrate, who comes after the death of the constable, has no bet- 
ter fate. At length the hangman, in proper person, lies in wait for Punch, 
who in his joyous recklessness runs upon him without seeing him. For 
the first time he seems somewhat embarrassed by this rencontre, is very 
slightly cast down, and does his best to flatter Mr. Ketch ; calls him his old 
friend, and inquires very particularly after the health of Mistress Ketch. 
The hangman, however, soon makes him understand that all friendship 
must now have an end ; and sets before him what a bad man he is to have 
killed so many men, and his wife and child. 

"As to them," says he, "they were my own property, and 'tis hard if 
a man may not do what he likes with his own." "And why did you kill 
the poor doctor, who came to help you ?" " Only in self-defence, good 
Mr. Ketch ; he wanted me to take his medicine." 

But all excuses and evasions are useless. Three or four men spring for- 
ward and bind Punch, whom Ketch leads to prison. 

In the next scene we behold him at the back of the stage, trying to look 
out from behind an iron grating, and rubbing his long nose against the bars. 
He is very wroth and miserable, yet, according to his use and wont, sings 
a song to drive away time. Mr. Ketch enters, and with the assistance of 
his helpers erects a gallows before the prison-door. Punch becomes sor- 
rowful, but, instead of feeling repentance, has only a fit of greater fondness 
and longing for his Polly. He however mans himself again, and makes 
various ' bon mots' on the handsome gallows, which he compares to a tree 
planted, as it seems, for the adornment of his prospect. " How beautiful 
it will be when it bears fruit !" cries he. 

Some men now bring the coffin, and place it at the foot of the gallows. 
" What have you there ?" says Punch. " Ah ha ! that is no doubt the 
basket to put the fruit in." 

Meanwhile Ketch returns, and greeting Punch, and opening the door po- 
litely, tells him that all is ready, — he may come when he likes. You may 
think that Punch is not very eager to accept the invitation. After a good 
deal of discussion Ketch calls out, "It's of no use, Master Punch, you must 
come out and be hanged." 

" You won't be so cruel." 

" "Why were you so cruel as to kill your wife and child ?" 

" Is that any reason for your being cruel too ?" — (argument against capital 
punishment.) 

Ketch appeals to no better principle than that of the strongest, and drags 
out Punch by his hair, begging for mercy and promising amendment. 

"Now, my good Punch," says Ketch, coolly, "do but have the goodness 

* As the biography of Punch seems becoming rather diffuse, and is tolerably well- 
known here (though not so well as might be imagined), this is omitted. — Tbansi. 



48 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

to put your head into this noose, and all will soon be over." Punch affects 
awkwardness, and can't get his head right into the noose. 

" Good God ! how awkward you are !" exclaims Ketch ; "you must put 
your head in so" — showing him. " Ay so, and then draw it tight," cries 
Punch, drawing up the unwary hangman in a moment, and hanging him on 
the gallows ; after which he hides himself behind the wall. Two men come 
to take away the body, lay it in the coffin, believing it to be that of the 
criminal, and carry it out, while Punch laughs in his sleeve, and dances away 
as usual. 

But the shrewdest battle is yet to come, for the devil himself ' in propria 
persona,' now comes to fetch him. Vainly does Punch lay before. him the 
most acute observations ; that he is a very stupid devil to wish to carry off 
the best friend he has on earth, and the like. The devil will not hear reason, 
and stretches out his long claws horribly at him. He appears just about to 
fly away with him, as erst with Faust, but Punch is not so easily to be dealt 
with; manfully he grasps his murderous staff, and defends himself even 
against the devil. A fearful fight ensues, and — who would have thought it 
P9ssible ? — Punch, so often in uttermost danger, at length remains universal 
conqueror, spits the black fiend on his stick, holds him up aloft, and whirl- 
ing about with him with shouts of triumph, sings, while he laughs more 
heartily than ever. 

I leave it to you to make all the philosophical reflections ; of which Punch's 
career is fitted to excite not a few. Above all interesting would be the in- 
quiry, how far the daily repetition of this favourite popular drama for so 
many years has influenced the morality of the lower classes. 

To conclude, — for the sake of tragic justice, I sketch on the margin of my 
sheet a second portrait of Punch, as he appears sitting in prison, when the 
gallows is just brought before him. 

In my next letter you will have all the details you desire concerning B , 

which pious personage I have to-day forgotten for the more interesting sinner 
Punch. — Adieu for to day ! 

December 1st. 

You remember what I told you of the mode of letting land in this country. 
As the builders of houses have only ninety-nine years to reckon on, they 
build as slightly as possible ; the consequence of which is that one is not 
very sure of one's life in some of the London houses. A house, by no means 
old, fell last night in St. James's street, close by me, just like a house of 
cards, carrying the half of another with it. Several persons were severely 
hurt, but the greater number had time to escape, as there were threatening 
warnings. Such is the rapidity With which they build here, that in a month 
the whole will doubtless be standing again, though perhaps not much safer 
than before. 

A few days ago I attended the interesting ceremony of the opening of 
Parliament by the King in person ; a ceremony which has not taken place 
for several years. 

In the centre of the House of Lords were assembled the Peers, their scar- 
let mantles negligently thrown over their ordinary morning dress. Near the 
wall opposite to the entrance stood the King's throne ; on benches on the left 
sat a number of ladies in full dress ; on the right the diplomatic corps and 
foreigners. In front of the throne was a bar, and behind it the members of 
the Lower House, in the common dress of our day. The house without, 
and the staircase, were filled with servants and heralds in the costume of the 
fourteenth century. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 49 

At two o'clock discharges of cannon announced the arrival of the King in 
state. A number of magnificent carriages and horses composed the proces- 
sion, a sketch of which 1 have taken in my book of reminiscences,* and 
have placed it in contrast with a drawing of one of Caesar's triumphs. At 
the sight of these pictures one involuntarily asks oneself, whether mankind 
have really made any progress. , Scarcely, as it seems, in as far as art is 
concerned; especially when we look at the two prominent personages, — 
those who occupy the highest seats at the respective ceremonies, — the King's 
body-coachman, and Caesar. 

At about half-past three the King made his appearance, he alone being in 
full dress, and truly covered from lop to toe with the ancient kingly decora- 
tions; with the crown on his head and the sceptre in his hand. He looked 
pale and bloated, and was obliged to sit on the throne for a considerable time 
before he could get breath enough to read his speech. During this time he 
turned friendly glances and considerable bows towards some favoured ladies. 
On his right stood Lord Liverpool, with the sword of state and the speech 
in his hand; and the Duke of Wellington on his left All three looked so 
miserable, so ashy-gray and worn out, that never did human greatness ap- 
pear to me so little worth; indeed the tragic side of all the comedies we 
play here below, fell almost heavily on my heart ; and yet it excited in me 
a strong feeling of the comic, to see how the most powerful monarch of the 
earth was obliged to present himself, as chief actor in a pantomime, before 
an audience whom he deems so infinitely beneath him. In fact, the whole 
pageant, including the King's costume, reminded me strikingly of one of 
those historical plays which are here got up so well ; nothing was wanting 
but the ' flourish of trumpets' which accompanies the entrance and exit of 
one of Shakspeare's kings, to make the illusion complete. 

In spite of his feebleness, George the Fourth read the ' banale' speech 
with great dignity and a fine voice ; but with that royal ' nonchalance' which 
does not much concern itself what His Majesty promises, or whether or not 
he is sometimes unable to decipher a word. It was very evident that the 
monarch was heartily glad when the ' corvee' was over, so that the conclu- 
sion went oft" somewhat more rapidly than the beginning. 

Since my last letter I have been twice to the theatre, which the late hours 
of dining render it impossible to do when one has any engagement. 

I saw Mozart's Figaro announced at Drury-lane, and delighted myself 
with the idea of hearing once more the sweet tones of my fatherland: — 
what then was my astonishment at the unheard-of treatment which the mas- 
ter-work of the immortal composer has received at English hands ! You will 
hardly believe me when I tell you that neither the Count, the Countess, nor 
Figaro sang ; these parts were given to mere actors, and their principal 
songs, with some little alteration in the words, were sung by the other 
singers ; to add to this, the gardener roared out some interpolated popular 
English songs, which suited Mozart's music just as a pitch-plaster would 
suit the face of the Venus de' Medici. The whole opera was moreover 
' arranged' by a certain Mr. Bishop (a circumstance which I had seen no- 

* My deceased friend executed a singular idea, and left a relic which his survivors 
preserve with melancholy pleasure. He had filled several large folio volumes with 
drawings, prints, autographs, and even small pamphlets; not as is commonly the case 
with ' scrap-books,' all sorts of things • pele mele;' — he inserted only those things which 
he had himself seen and witnessed, in the same order in which he had seen them. Every 
sketch or engraving was accompanied by a note, the sum of which notes gives a con- 
secutive sketch of his whole career in this world; a perfect atlas of his life, as he often 
called it — Edit. 

7 



50 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ticcd in the bill, hut did not understand till now), — that is, adapted to Eng- 
lish ears by means of the most tasteless and shocking alterations. 

The English national music, the coarse heavy melodies of which can 
never be mistaken for an instant, has, to me at least, something singularly 
offensive ; an expression of brutal feeling both in pain and pleasure, which 
smacks of' roast-beef, plum-pudding, and porter.' You may imagine, there- 
fore, what an agreeable effect these incorporations with the lovely and re- 
fined conceptions of Mozart must produce. 

' Je n'y pouvais tenir' — poor Mozart appeared to me like a martyr on the 
cross, and I suffered no less by sympathy. 

This abominable practice is the more inexcusable, since here is really no 
want of meritorious singers, male and female ; and, with better arrange- 
ment, very good performances might be given. It is true, even if the stage 
were in good order, a second Orpheus would still be required to tame Eng- 
lish audiences. 

Far better was the performance in Covcnt Garden, where Charles Kem- 
ble, one of the best English actors, gave an admirable representation of the 
part of Charles the Second. Kemble is a man of the best education, and 
has always lived in good society ; he is therefore qualified to represent, a 
king royally ; — with the ' aisance,' that is proper to all exalted persons. He 
very skilfully gave an amiable colouring to the levity of Charles the Second ; 
without ever, even in moments of the greatest ' abandon,' losing the type 
of that inborn conscious dignity, so difficult to imitate. The costume, too, 
was as if cut out of the frame of an old picture, down to the veriest trifle ; 
and this was observed by all the other actors, for which Kemble, who is 
also manager, deserves great praise. 

I must, however, confess that in the next piece, in which Frederick the 
Great plays the principal part, there was not the same intimate knowledge 
and perfect imitation of foreign costume ; both the king and his suite seemed 
to have borrowed their wardrobe from that of a pantomime. Zieten pre- 
sented himself in a high grenadier's cap, and Seydlitz appeared in locks ' a 
la Murat,' and with as many orders as that royal actor used to wear ; a pro- 
fusion of which were by no means the fashion in Frederick's day, nor were 
they then worn as mere appendages of the toilet. 

December 2nd. 

I often dine at Prince E 's, who exhibits a perfect model to ' diplo- 

mates' how dignified ' representation' may be combined with agreeable fa- 
cile manners ; and how a man may please every body if he understands the 
art of placing himself ' a sa portee,' yet without suffering his own dignity 
to be forgotten for an instant : — ' un vrai Seigneur,' — such as are every day 
becoming rarer. Never too did a foreigner succeed so perfectly in Eng- 
land ; and yet, most assuredly, without the slightest concession to English 
arrogance. This implies infinite tact; the lighter, more vivacious character 
of a South German; and the most astute intellect concealed beneath the 
most unpretending ' bonhommie ;' the whole backed and set off by a great 
name and a splendid fortune. 

The other members of the diplomatic corps, with few exceptions, are left 
by him quite in the back-ground, and most of the plenipotentiaries here dis- 
appear completely in the crowd. Among the ambassadors there is, how- 
ever, one of the female sex who plays a great part * 
But more of this another time. I entered upon the subject of Diplomates, 
only for the sake of repeating to you a very pretty ' bon mot' of one of 
them whom you know. I heard it to-day at dinner. Count H was 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 51 

ambassador at a German court renowned for its economy (' pour ne pas dire 
mesquineric,') and on some solemn occasion received a snuff-box with the 
portrait oi* the sovereign ; which, however, was set round with very small, 
paltry diamonds. Shortly afterwards, one of his colleagues asked him to 
show him his present. " Vous ne trouvercz pas le portrait ressemblant," 
said the Count, giving him the snuff-box, — " mais les diamants." 

1 occasionally see, with great satisfaction, the venerable Elliot, who, to- 
gether witli the dry but very interesting Lord St. Helens, whom Segur wo 
often mentions in his Memoirs, belongs to the ' Doyens' of English diplo- 
macy, and still dwells with extraordinary pleasure on the recollection of his 
residence at Dresden. He has several very charming daughters, and finds 
it difficult to live in a style befitting his rank, for his long services have not 
been rewarded with English liberality. i; 

Another very interesting person is Sir L M , who was formerly 

in high favour with the king, then Prince of Wales, and deserves mention, 
first, because he is a most agreeable Amphitryon and entertains Ids friends 
admirably, and secondly, because he is one of the most original of men, and 
one of the few truly practical philosophers I have ever met with. The pre- 
judices of the many seem for him to have no existence ; and nobody could 
be more difficult to impose on by mere authority, whether on matters of 
heaven or earth. Although sixty years old, and a martyr to the most un- 
heard-of tortures with which gout and stone can rack an unhappy mortal, 
no one ever heard a complaint from him ; nor is his cheerful, nay merry hu- 
mour ever saddened by it for a moment. It must be confessed that there 
are dispositions and temperaments which are worth a hundred thousand a 
year. 

When I was first introduced to him, a short time since, he had just un- 
dergone the terrible operation for the stone. The surgeon refused to under- 
take it, on the ground that die weakness of the patient rendered it too ha- 
zardous, but was at length almost compelled by him to perform it. At that 
time he kept his bed, and looked like a corpse, and at going in I involunta- 
rily made ' une mine de doleance,' upon which he instantly interrupted me, 
and told me to lay aside all grimaces. " What cannot be cured," said he, 
" must be endured; and better gaily, that sadly :" for himself, he said, he 
had certainly abundant cause to laugh at his physicians, who had given him 
his passport with the utmost certainty at least ten times, but had almost all 
gone to the d — 1 before him. " Besides," said he, " I have enjoyed life as 
few have, and must now learn the dark side." In spite of all his pleasures, 
and all his pains, the gay-hearted man is still in such good preservation, 
that, since he is about again, with his artist-like peruque, he does not look 
much above forty, and exhibits a spirited and ' rayonnante' physiognomy, 
whose features must once have been handsome. 

December 3rrf. 

Kemble gave me a high treat this evening as Falstaff. It is certain that 
even the greatest dramatic poets stand in need of the actor's aid to bring out 
their work. I never so fully understood the character of the mad knight; 
never was it so manifest to me what his outward deportment must have been, 

* It is a very characteristic trait of the gay careless character of this amiable old 
man, that he let a number of large boxes, containing' his effects, stand at Dresden from 
tjie time he quitted it. At length he was induced to intrust some one with the charge 
of overlooking the contents. This person, who knew his very narrow circumstances, 
was not a little surprised at finding the presents made to him as English ambassador, 
set with jewels of considerable value, still in their packing cases. 



52 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

as since I saw him new-born in the person of Charles Kemble. His dress 
and mask were striking indeed, but by no means such a caricature as on 
our stages. Still less had he the air of a man of low rank and breeding, visi- 
bly a mere ' farceur,' as Devrient, for instance, represented him in Berlin. 
Falstaff, although a man of vulgar soul, is still by habit and inclination a 
practised courtier; and the coarseness which he often assumes in the prince's 
company is at least as much intentional acting, employed by him to amuse 
the Prince (for princes Often love vulgarity from its very contrast with the 
gloomy elevation of their own station,) as to gratify his own humour. Mr. 
Kemble caught the finest shades of the character ; for, although he never 
lost sight of the natural, invincible humour, the witty presence of mind, and 
the diverting drollery which made Falstaff such an agreeable companion,— 
nay, which rendered him almost a necessary of life to those who had once 
associated with him, — he is quite another man when he appears at Court in 
the presence of the king and other dignified persons ; or when he plays antics 
with the Prince and his companions ; or, lastly, when he is alone with the 
latter. In the first case, you see a facetious man, somewhat like the Mare- 
chal de Bassompierre, ludicrously fat, but a man of dignified and gentleman- 
like air; always a joker, it is true, but in a good 'ton,' never forgetting the 
respect due to the place and the presence in which he is. In the second 
stage, he allows himself to go much further; takes all sorts of coarse free- 
doms ; but ever with observable care to exalt the Prince, and to assume only 
the privilege of a Court fool, who, apparently, may say all that comes into 
his head. In the last stage, we see Falstaff in complete ' neglige,' after he 
has thrown off all regard to appearances. Here he wallows delightfully in 
the mire, like a swine in a ditch ; and yet even here he still remains origi- 
nal, and excites more laughter than disgust. This is the supreme art, the 
last triumph of the poet: he alone can give, even to the most horrid monsters 
of sin and shame, something like a divine impress ; something which awakens 
our interest and attracts us, even to our own astonishment. This is the high 
dramatic truth, the creative power of genius, speaking of which Walter Scott 
so prettily says, "I can only compare Shakspeare with that man in the Ara- 
bian Nights, who has the power of passing into any body at pleasure, and 
imitating its feelings and actions." 

I must here remark, that there is but one character in this immortal poet's 
works which always appeared to me ill-drawn and unnatural, nor does any 
excite less interest in general. This is the king in Hamlet. To mention 
only one trait, it appears to me quite psycologically false, when the author 
makes the king kneel down, and then exclaim, " I cannot pray." The king 
is never represented as an irreligious man, a subtle sceptic, but merely as a 
coarse sensual sinner; now we daily see that a man of this cast cannot only 
pray regularly and zealously, but even pray that his crimes may prosper : 
like that woman who was found alone in a robber's cave, after the capture 
of the gang, on her knees, praying earnestlv to heaven that the expedition 
in which she believed them then engaged might be successful, and that they 
might return laden with booty. 

Nay even public pre-appointed prayers have often no better aim. What 
examples of this kind does not history afford ! No, the sinful king can 
pray, — the person in this tragedy who cannot, is Hamlet. For it is only 
the unbelieving; the man who wants to fathom everything; the spiritual 
chemist who sees one apparently firm substance after another melt away ; 
this man — till he is enabled by the divine influence to construct one,* in- 

* Hovv may this be effected ? Only when a man brings himself to acknowledge that 
religion is entirely and solely an affair of the heart and feelings ; to which the head 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 53 

ward and indestructible, (and this point Hamlet has manifestly not reached) 
this man alone, I say, cannot pray, for the Object fails him. He cannot 
deny it to himself, — when he prays, he is only acting a part with himself. 
This is a melancholy process to pass through, and is imputed to unhappy 
mortals as a crime by those who first place the poor child on the bed of 
Procrustes, and by that means often render it impossible for the cramped 
and shortened limbs ever to extend themselves again to their natural length. 

But back to the play. It concluded with a melo-drama, in which a large 
Newfoundland dog really acted admirably ; he defended a banner for a long 
time, pursued the enemy, and afterwards came on the stage wounded, lame, 
and bleeding, and died in the most masterly manner, with a last wag of the 
tail that was really full of genius. You would have sworn that the good 
beast knew at least as well as any of his human companions what he was 
about. 

I left the theatre in such good humour that I won eight rubbers at whist 
after it at the Club, for luck at play goes with good spirits and confidence. — 
But good night. 

December 4th. 

In consequence of the opening of Parliament, society begins to be more 
lively, though London ' en gros' is still empty. 

The most elegant ladies of the first circles now give small parties, access 
to which is far more difficult to most Englishmen than to foreigners of rank ; 
for the despotism of fashion, as I have already told you, rules in this land 
of freedom with iron sceptre, and extends through all classes in a manner 
we on the Continent have no conception of. 

But without indulging too early in general observations, I will describe to 
you my own way of life in London. 

I rise late ; read, like a half-nationalized foreigner, three or four newspa- 
pers at breakfast; look in my 'visiting-book' what visits I have to pay, and 
either drive to pay them in my cabriolet or ride. In the course of these 
excursions, I sometimes catch the enjoyment of the picturesque ; the strug- 
gle of the blood-red sun with the winter fogs often produces wild and singu- 
lar effects of light. After my visits are paid, I ride for several hours about 
the beautiful environs of London, return when it grows dark, work a little, 
dress for dinner, which is at seven or -eight, and spend the evening either in 
the theatre or at some small party. The ludicrous ' routs,' — at which one 
hardly finds standing-room on the staircase, — where one pushes and is 
pushed, and is kept for hours in a hot-house temperature, — have not yet 
commenced. In England however, except in a few diplomatic houses, you 
can go nowhere in an evening except en special invitation. In these small 
parties there is not much 'gene,' but general conversation has no place: 
each gentleman usually singles out a lady who peculiarly interests him, and 

can be profitable only by standing- as watchman of the sanctuary, and guarding it with 
the sword of reason from its two hereditary foes, superstition and intolerance. If he 
cannot be satisfied with this, if he will insist upon understanding what our nature for- 
bids us to understand, he must fall into one of two difficulties ; either he must take 
refuge in a so-called positive religion, or in a system of speculative philosophy. Both 
are unsatisfactory, as soon as he seeks to find more in them than an interesting sport 
of the fancy or of the intellect. While tke profound innate sentiment of God, of Love, 
and of the Good, in every healthy state of the mind, stands with a steady irrefragable 
security, as clear to the lowest capacity, as to the highest, not merely as a belief, but 
as the true essence of his being, — his proper individual self. And this, without either 
reason or understanding being brought into immediate activity ; — though both, when 
reflection is called in, must entirely confirm the sentiment. — Editor. 



54 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

does not quit her for the whole evening. Many fair ones are thus frequently 
left sitting alone, without an opportunity of speaking a word ; they however 
do not betray any dissatisfaction, even by a look or gesture, for they are of 
a very passive nature. Every body of course speaks French, as with us, 
' tant bien que mal,' but this continued ' gene' annoys the ladies so much 
after a time, that a man has no little advantage who can speak English 
tolerably. 

You see this life is pretty much a 'far niente,' though not a very sweet 
one to my taste, for I love society only in intimate circles, and attach myself 
with difficulty, — indeed now scarcely at all,—- to new acquaintances. The 
ennui, which seizes me in such an indifferent state of mind, is too clearly 
written on my undiplomatic face not to extend to others as contagiously as 
yawning. Here and there I find an exception : — to-day for instance I made 
the acquaintance of Mr. Morier, the clever and very agreeable author of 
Hadji Baba ; and of Mr. Hope, the imputed author of Anastasius, a work 
of far higher genius. This book is worthy of Byron : many maintain that 
Mr. Hope, who is rather remarkable for his reserve than for anything po- 
etical in his appearance, cannot possibly have written it. This doubt de- 
rives considerable force from a work which Mr. Hope formerly published 
on furniture, the style and contents of which certainly contrast strangely 
with the glowing impassioned Anastasius, overflowing with thought and 
feeling. An acquaintance of mine said to me, " One thing or the other : 
either Anastasius is not by him, or the work on furniture." But matter so 
different brings with it as different a style; and as I observed Mr. Hope, 
perhaps with involuntary prepossession, he appeared to me no ordinary 
man. , He is very rich, and his house full of treasures of art, and of luxu- 
ries which I shall describe hereafter. His furniture theory, which is fa- 
shioned on the antique, I cannot praise in practice: — the chairs are ungo- 
vernable; other trophy-like structures look ridiculous, and the sofas have 
such sharp salient points in all directions, that an incautious sitter might 
hurt himself seriously. 

On my return home at night I found your letter, which, like everything 
from you, gave me more pleasure than aught else can. Say not, however, 
that the pain of parting occasions you such deep depression, — let it not be 
deeper than a joyful meeting can at once remove ; and that is probably not 
very distant. 

That you point to another life, as soon as things do not go precisely ac- 
cording to our wishes in this, seems to me, dearest, to show a want of 
Christian patience and confidence. No, I confess it, spite of transient fits 
of melancholy, I still feel the attraction of earth ; and this ' span of life,' 
as you call it, has strong hold on my heart. If indeed you, my affectionate 
tutelary goddess, were also Fortuna, I should fare better than any mortal 
living: ' et toutes les etoiles paliraient devant la mienne ;' — but since you 
love me, you are my Fortuna, and 1 desire no better. 

Do not suffer your own melancholy, or mine, to deceive you. As for 
me, you know that a nothing raises the barometer of my spirits, and a 
nothing often depresses it. This is certainly too delicate a nervous organi- 
zation, and little fitted for every-day, home-baked (hausbacknen) happiness, 
— which requires strong nerves. 

December 5th. 

Oberon, Weber's song of the swan, has occupied my evening. — The ex- 
ecution of both the instrumental and vocal parts left much to desire ; but 
on the whole, the opera was extremely well performed, for London. The 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 55 

best part was the decorations, especially at the conjuration of the spirits. 
They appear, not, as usual, in the standing costume, — scarlet jackets and 
breeches, with snaky locks and flames on their heads, — but in the form of 
huge rocky caves, which occupy the whole stage ; every mass of rock then 
suddenly changes into some fantastic and frightful form or face, gleaming 
with many-coloured flames and lurid light, out of which here and there a 
whole figure leans grinning forward, while the fearful thrilling music re- 
echoes on every side from the moving chorus of rocks. 

The opera itself I regard as one of Weber's feebler productions. There 
are beautiful parts, especially the introduction, which is truly elf-like. I am 
less delighted with the overture, though so highly extolled by connoisseurs. 

I ought to have begun by telling you that I was presented to the King to- 
day, at a great levee. — I give you as a proof of the extraordinary voluntary 
seclusion of the present sovereign, that our Secretary of Legation was pre- 
sented with me for the first time, though he has been here in that capacity 
for two years. His Majesty has a very good memory. He immediately 
recollected my former visit to England, though he mistook the date of it by 
several years. I took occasion to make my compliments to him on the ex- 
traordinary embellishment of London since that time, which indeed is to be 
ascribed in great measure to him. After a gracious reply, I passed on, and 
placed myself in a convenient station for seeing the whole spectacle. It 
was odd enough. 

The king, on account of the feeble state of his health, remained seated ; 
— the company marched past him in a line ; each made his bow, was ad- 
dressed or not, and then either placed himself in the row on the other side 
of the room, or quitted it. All those who had received any appointment 
kneeled down before the king and kissed his hand, at which the American 
Minister, near whom I had accidentally placed myself, made a rather satiri- 
cal face. The clergymen and lawyers in their black gowns and white pow- 
dered wigs, short and long, had a most whimsical masquerading appearance. 
One of them was the object of an almost universal ill-suppressed laugh. 
This personage had kneeled to be 'knighted,' as the English call it, and in 
this posture, with the long fleece on his head, looked exactly like a sheep 
at the slaughter-block. His Majesty signed to the great Field Marshal to 
give him his sword. For the first time, perhaps, the great warrior could 
not draw the sword from the scabbard ; he pulled and pulled, — all in vain. 
The king waiting with outstretched arm ; the duke vainly pulling with all 
his might ; the unhappy martyr prostrate in silent resignation, as if expect- 
ing his end, and the whole brilliant court standing around in anxious expec- 
tation : — it was a group worthy of Gilray's pencil. At length the state 
weapon started like, a flash of lightning from its sheath. His Majesty grasp- 
ed it impatiently, — indeed his arm was probably weary and benumbed 
with being so long extended, — so that the sword, instead of alighting on a 
new knight, fell on an old wig, which for a moment enveloped king and 
subject in a cloud of powder. 

December 6th. 

Mr. R had long ago invited me to visit him at his country-house, 

and I took advantage of a disengaged day to drive out with my friend L 

to dine there. The royal banker has bought no ducal residence, but lives 
in a pretty villa. We found some Directors of the East India Company, 
and several members of his own family and faith, whom I liked very much. 
I extremely respect this family for having the courage to remain Jews. Only 



56 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

an idiot can esteem a Jew the less for his religion, hut renegades have al- 
ways a presumption against their sincerity, which it is difficult to get over. 

There are three cases in which I should unconditionally allow Jews to 
change their religion. First, if they really believe that only Christians can 
be saved; secondly, if their daughters wish to marry Christians, who will 
have them on no other terms ; thirdly, if a Jew were elected king of a 
Christian people, — a thing by no means impossible, since men far below 
the rank of Jewish barons, and notorious for the absence of all religion, 
have frequently ascended the throne in these latter days.* 

Mr. R was in high good-humour, amusing, and talkative. It was 

diverting to hear him explain to us the pictures around his dining-room, (all 
portraits of the sovereigns of Europe, presented through their ministers.) 
and talk of the originals as his very good friends, and, in a certain sense, 

his equals. " Yos," said he, " the once pressed me for a loan, and 

in the same week in which I received his autograph letter, his father wrote 
to me also with his own hand from Rome to beg me for Heaven's sake not 
to have any concern in it, for that I could not have to do with a more dis- 
honest man than his son. ' C'etait sans doute tres Catholique ;' probably, 

however, the letter was written by the old , who hated her own son to 

such a degree, that she used to say of him, — everybody knows how un- 
justly, — " He has the heart of a t with the face of an a ." 

The others' turn came next. * * * * * 

He concluded, however, by modestly calling himself the dutiful and gene- 
rously paid agent and servant of these high potentates, all of whom he 
honoured equally, let the state of politics be what it might; for, said he, 
laughing, " I never like to quarrel with my bread and butter." 

It shows great prudence in Mr. R to have accepted neither title nor 

order, and thus to have preserved a far more respectable independence. He 
doubtless owes much to the good advice of his extremely amiable and ju- 
dicious wife, who excels him in tact and knowledge of the world, though 
not perhaps in acuteness and talents for business. 

On our way there we had been tempted to alight to see the state-carriage 
of another monarch of Asiatic origin, the King of the Birmans. It was 
taken in the late war. It is crowded with precious stones, valued at six 
thousand pounds, and has a splendid effect by candlelight : its canopy-like 
pyramidal form seemed to me in better taste than that of our carriages. 
The attendants sitting on it were odd enough, — two little boys and two pea- 
cocks, carved in wood and beautifully painted and varnished. At the time 
it was taken, it was drawn by two white elephants ; and fifteen thousand 
precious stones, great and small, all unpolished, still adorn the gilded wood 
of which it is made. A number of curious and costly Birman arms were 
placed, as trophies, round the spacious apartment, which gave a doubly 
rich and interesting effect to the whole exhibition. As people always give 
a great deal for money here, there was a Pcecilorama in an adjoining room, 
consisting also of Birman and Indian views, over which the light is inge- 
niously thrown so as to produce very lively and varied effects. 

* It is very problematical which is the worst in the eyes of the pious, — to have no 
religion at all, or one different from their own. Louis X1V-, who was unquestionably 
a champion of religion, decided for the latter opinion. The Duke of Orleans pro- 
posed to him an ambassador to Spain, whom he accepted, but the next day recalled, 
because he had heard he was a Jansenist. " By no means, Your Majesty," said the 
Duke ; "for, as far as 1 know, he does not even believe in a God." "May I depend 
upon that?" asked the king gravely. " Certainly," replied the Duke, smiling. 
"Well, then, let him take the post, in God's name." 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 57 

I don't know why such things are not used as decorations for rooms. 
At a fete, for instance, a room thus fitted up would surely be a much greater 
novelty than the hackneyed ornaments of gay draperies, orange trees, and 
flowers. 

December 8th. 

On my way home from a dinner at M. de Polignac's, a very agreeable 
but highly orthodox representative of ' l'ancien regime,' I was in time to 
find the celebrated Mathews " At Home" at his theatre. The curtain was 
dropped, and Mr. Mathews sitting in front of it at a table covered with a 
cloth. 

He began by discursively relating to the public that he was just returned 
from a journey to Paris, where he had met with many original individuals 
and droll adventures. Imperceptibly he passed from the narrative style to 
a perfectly dramatic performance, in which, with almost inconceivable talent 
and memory, he placed before the eyes of his audience all that he had wit- 
nessed ; while he so totally altered his face, speech, and whole exterior, 
with the rapidity of lightning, that one must have seen it to believe it pos- 
sible. His outward helps consist only of a cap, a cloak, a false nose, a 
wig, &c, which he draws from under the table cover, and with these slen- 
der means produces an entire and instant transformation. The applause 
was tumultuous and the laughter incessant. The principal persons (who 
were introduced in various situations,) were an old Englishman, who found 
fault with everything abroad and praised everything at home; a provincial 
lady who never walked in the street without a French dictionary in her 
hand, worried the passers-by with incessant questions, and seized every op- 
portunity of assisting other English people with her superior knowledge, 
in doing which, as may be imagined, she stumbled upon the most perverted, 
burlesque, and often equivocal expressions ; a dandy from the city, who 
affected ' le grand air ;' and his opposite, a fat farmer from Yorkshire, who 
played pretty much the part of farmer Feldkummel. The most amusing 
thing to me was an English lecture on craniology by Spurzheim. The 
likeness to that person, so well known in England, — to his whole manner 
and his German accent, — was so perfect, that the theatre shook with inces- 
sant laughter. 

I was less pleased with some other imitations ; particularly that of Tal- 
ma, who is far above the reach of any mere mimic, be his talents what 
they may. Besides, his death is too recent, and sorrow for his irreparable 
loss too great in the mind of every lover of art, to render such a parody 
agreeable. 

The performance concluded with a little farce, for which the curtain was 
drawn up, and in which Mathews again played alone. He filled seven or 
eight different parts, exclusive of those of a dog and a child, which were 
indeed personated by puppets, but which he barked and prattled, in as mas- 
terly a manner as he spoke the others. At first he is a French tutor, who 
is going to travel with a little lord ten years old, whom he shuts into a gui- 
tar-case that he may save the fare of the diligence, and at the same time 
charge it to the papa. At every stage he takes him out, to give him air 
and make him say his lesson. He carries on the conversation with infinite 
drollery, and surprising skill as a ventriloquist. The boy's resistance to 
being shut up in his box again, — the way in which his murmurs and com- 
plaints die away, like the waltz in the Freischiitz, till at length the lid is 
clapped to, and the last tones come from the shut case like a faint echo, — 
are inconceivably comic. 

8 



58 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

After many adventures which beset the diligence and its passengers, an 
old maid (again Mathews) makes her appearance. She has a favourite lap- 
dog, which is not suffered to travel inside, but which she is trying to smug- 
gle in, and fixes her eye on the guitar-case as a fit hiding-place for her dar- 
ling. In her hurry to accomplish her purpose she does not observe that the 
place is already occupied. But hardly has she laid the case out of her hand, 
when the dog begins to growl and bark, the boy to howl, and she to scream 
for help; which trio made the gallery almost frantic with delight. 

The whole affair is, as you perceive, not exactly aesthetic, and rather fitted 
to an English stomach than to any other. It is, indeed, almost painful to 
see such skill devotod to such absurd buffooneries ; the talent, however, is 
still most remarkable ; and even the physical powers wonderful, which can 
support these efforts of acting and continual speaking, with all these fatiguing 
disguises, without a single slip or stumble, for hours together. 

Not to require as great an exertion of patience from you, I will now con- 
clude. I wish heartily that my display of the meagre peep-shows of the 
town may not tire you too much. You asked for pictures of daily life ; you 
expect from me no statistical work, no topography, no regular enumeration 
of the so-called sights of London, and no systematic treatise on England; 
nor am I in any condition to afford you such. 

Receive, therefore, the unpretending humble fare I send you, in good part. 
It is at all events now and then seasoned with a grain of pepper. 

Your faithful L . 



LETTER VII. 

London, Dec. 9th, 1826. 
Dearest Friend, 

It is not uninteresting to attend the auctions here ; first, on account of the 
multitude of extremely rare and valuable things, which form the wonderful 
activity of life and the constant vicissitudes of fortune are daily brought into 
the market, and often sold very cheap ; and secondly, for the ingenuity and 
eloquence of the auctioneers, of which I have already made honourable men- 
tion. They embroider their orations with more wit gratis, than ours would 
be willing to furnish for ready money. 

This morning I saw the sale of an Indian cabinet, the property of a bank- 
rupt Nabob, which contained some curious and beautiful works of art. " The. 
possessor of these treasures," said the orator, "has taken much trouble for 
nothing ; for nothing to himself, I mean, but a great deal to you, gentlemen. 
He had once doubtless more money than wit, but has now, as certainly, 
more wit than money." " Modesty and merit," observed he afterwards, 
" go together only thus far, — both begin with an m." And in this style, and 
with such ' jeus de mots,' he continued. " What enables the poor to live ?" 
concluded he. " Charity or liberality do but little towards it. Vanity, va- 
nity is the thing, — not theirs, poor devils, but that of the rich. If you then, 
gentlemen, will but display a little of this praiseworthy vanity, and buy, you 
will earn a blessing even without meaning it." 

Yes, truly, thought I, there you are right, old jester, for so admirably is 
the world contrived, that good must ever arise out of evil ; and the exist- 
ence of evil only serves to render the good which succeeds it more con- 
spicuous. 

One must moralize everywhere. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 59 

I dined at the house of a lady of distinction, who talked to me the whole 
time we were at table about Napoleon, and, with true English exaggeration 1 , 
was so enamoured of him, that she thought the execution of the Duke 
d'Enghein, and the betrayal of Spain, laudable acts. 

Though I do not go quite so far, I am, as you know, an admirer of this 
man's colossal greatness, and delighted my neighbour highly by describing 
to her Napoleon's former magnificence, of which I was an eyewitness, — 
those brilliant days in which Ca?sar himself stood amazed at his splendour ; 

" Quand les ambassadeurs de tant de rois divers 
Vinrent le reconnoitre au nom de l'univers." 

For his own fame, I do not wish otherwise any of his later misfortunes; 
nor for the tragic interest, any of his errors and faults. He bore ' coups 
d'epees' and ' coups d'epingles' with equal fortitude and dignity ; and left 
an epitaph worthy of his life in the words, ' Je legue l'opprobre de ma mort 
a l'Angleterre." 

Thus much is certain, he is still too near us for impartial judgment; and 
experience has amply taught us that it was less his despotic principles than 
his personal aggrandisement which provoked such inveterate hostility. The 
principles exist still ; but, God be praised, the energy with which he put 
them in practice, is utterly wanting, and that is a great gain for human na- 
ture.* 

There is now a French theatre here, which is attained only by the best 
company, and nevertheless is like a dark little private theatre. Perlet and 
Laporte are its great supports, and play admirably. The latter also, with 
true French assurance, acts on the English stage, and thinks, when the 
audience laughs at his accent and French manners, that it is merely a tribute 
to his ' vis comica.' 

• I went to the theatre with Mrs. , wife of the well-known minister 

and member of parliament, and accompanied her after the play to the first 
genuine rout I have attended this time of my being in England, — what is 
more, too, in a house in which I was entirely a stranger. It is the custom 
here to take your friends to parties of this sort, and to present them, then 
and there, to the mistress of the house, who never thinks you can bring 
enough to fill her small rooms to suffocation : the more the better ; and for 
the full satisfaction of her vanity, a 'bagarre' must arise among the carriages 
below ; some must be broken to pieces, and a few men and horses killed or 
hurt, so that the ' Morning Post' of the following day may parade a long 
article on the extremely ' fashionable soiree' given by ' Lady Vain,' or ' Lady 
Foolish.' 

In the course of the evening I made a more interesting acquaintance than 

I expected on the staircase, (I could get no further,) in Lady C B , 

who has some reputation as an authoress. She is the sister of a Duke, and 
was a celebrated beauty. 

The next morning I called on her, and found everything in her house 
brown, in every possible shade ; — furniture, curtains, carpets, her own and 

* Bourienne's Memoirs have unfortunately furnished us with fewer materials for 
forming a judgment on Napoleon's real character than was expected. Bourienne 
paints Napoleon as Bourienne, and if the dwarf had run around the feet of the giant 
for a century, he could never have looked in his eyes In one thing, however, which 
was quite ' a sa portee,' he was right ; namely, that the grand enemy by which Napo- 
leon was overthrown, was the commercial class, so impoliticly driven to extremity ; a 
class now-a-days far more powerful than church or army, and which will yield only to 
the still stronger power of public opinion, if ever they should come into collision. — 
Editor. 



60 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

her children's dresses, presented no other colour. The room was without 
looking-glasses or pictures ; and its only ornaments were casts from the an- 
tique. ***.*** * * 

After I had been there some time, the celebrated bookseller C entered. 

This man has made a fortune by Walter Scott's novels, though, as I was 
told, he refused his first and best, Waverly, and at last gave but a small sum 

for it. I hope the charming Lady C B had better cause to be 

satisfied with him. I thought it discreet to leave her with her man of busi- 
ness, and made my bow. 

December 10th. 

The affairs of Portugal are now much discussed in all circles; and the 

Marquis P — read us the just printed English Declaration to-night, in a 

box at the French theatre. Politics are here a main ingredient of social 
intercourse; as they begin to be in Paris, and will in time become in our 
sleepy Germany ; for the whole world has now that tendency. The lighter 
and more frivolous pleasures suffer by this change ; and the art of conversa- 
tion as it once flourished in France, will perhaps soon be entirely lost. In 
this country I should rather think it never existed, unless perhaps in Charles 
the Second's time. And, indeed, people here are too slavishly subject to 
established usages; too systematic in all their enjoyments ; too incredibly 
kneaded up with prejudices; in a word, too little vivacious, to attain to that 
unfettered spring and freedom of spirit, which must ever be the sole basis of 
agreeable society. I must confess that I know none more monotonous, nor 
more persuaded of its own pre-excellence, than the highest society of this 
country, — with but (e\v exceptions, and those chiefly among foreigners, or 
persons who have resided a good deal on the Continent. A stony, marbJe- 
cold spirit of caste and fashion rules all classes, and makes the highest te- 
dious, the lower ridiculous. True politeness of the heart and cheerful ' bon- 
hommie' are rarely to be met with in what is called society ; nor, if we look 
for foreign ingredients, do we find either French grace and vivacity, or 
Italian naturalness ; but at most, German stiffness and awkwardness conceal- 
ed under an iron mask of arrogance and ' hauteur.' 

In spite of this, the ' nimbus' of a firmly anchored aristocracy and vast 
wealth, (combined with admirable taste in spending it, which no one can 
deny them,) has stamped the Great World of this country as that ' par ex- 
cellence,' of Europe, to which all other nations must more or less give way. 
But that foreigners individually and personally do not find it agreeable, is 
evident by their rarity in England, and by the still greater rarity of their 
desire to stay long. Every one of them at the bottom of his heart thanks 
God when he is out of English society ; though personal vanity afterwards 
leads him to extol that uninspiring foggy sun, whose beams assuredly gave 
him but little ' comfort' when he lived in them. 

Far more loveable, because far more loving, do the English appear in their 
domestic and most intimate relations ; though even here some 'baroque' cus- 
toms ; — for instance, that sons in the highest ranks, as soon as they are fledg- 
ed, leave the paternal roof and live alone ; nay actually do not present them- 
selves at their fathers' dinner-table without a formal invitation. I lately read 
a moving instance of conjugal affection in the newspaper: The Marquis of 
Hastings died in Malta ; shortly before his death he ordered that his right 
hand should be cut off immediately after his death, and sent to his wife. A 
gentleman of my acquaintance, out of real tenderness, and with her previously 
obtained permission, cut off his mother's head, that he might keep the skull 
as long as he lived ; while other Englishmen, I really believe, would rather 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 61 

endure eternal torments than permit the scalpel to come near their bodies. 
The laws enjoin the most scrupulous fulfilment of such dispositions of a 
deceased person; however extravagant they maybe, they must be executed. 
I am told there is a country-house in England where a corpse, fully dressed, 
has been standing at a window for the last half-century, and still overlooks 
its former property. 

Just as I was going to entertain you with more English originalities, my 
long-desired head-gardener entered my room, bringing your letters. What 
a pity that you could not put yourself into the large packet, (of course in all 
your 'fraicheur,' and not like Lord Hastings' hand,) or inhabit a pretty box, 
like Gothe's delightful Gnome, so that I might call you out and share with 
you every enjoyment, fresh as it arises, without this long interval ! As it is, 
you are melancholy, because I was so a fortnight before ; or your sympa- 
thizing answer to a cheerful letter of mine arrives just as I am labouring 
under a fresh attack of ' spleen.' As you say, such an old letter is often like 
a dead body which, after being forgotten, is fished up out of the sea. 

I must laugh at you, and scold you for one thing — that you write me, as 
is your way, scarcely any details about what is passing at my beloved 
M , and send me, instead, long extracts out of a book of Travels in Af- 
rica, which I have read here ages ago in the original. I will certainly pay 
you in your own coin the next time you do so. I am just studying a very 
interesting work, Dass Preussische Exercier-Reglement von 1805, out of 
which, when other matter fails me, I shall send you the cleverest and most 
entertaining extracts. O you gentle lamb ! you shall often be ' shorn' with 
these African novelties of yours ; the more so, as the last shearing took 
place a long time ago, and you must be sitting as deeply imbedded in your 

wool as the Knights of St. John in B , when, displaying their double 

crosses, they await the highest bidder on their Woolsacks. The seat of 
the Lord Chancellor here is also a Woolsack, but of rather a more aristo- 
cratical sort, more nearly allied to the Golden Fleece. 

I now make almost daily park-excursions with R , to render his visit 

to England as useful as possible ; for a good gardener will learn more here 
in his profession during a short stay, than in a study of ten years at home. 
There are indeed in the immediate neighbourhood of London a great number 
of very interesting seats, all of them situated on very pleasant and animated 
roads. Amongst these may particularly be mentioned a villa of Lord Mans- 
field's, the decorations of which do much honour to the taste of his lady. 
Sion House, belonging to the Duke of Northumberland, and laid out by 
Brown, is also extremely worth seeing, on account of its remarkable green- 
houses, and the multitude of gigantic exotic trees in the open air, none of 
which would bear our climate. Here are also to be seen whole groves of 
rhododendrons, camellias, &c, which are but partially covered in winter; 
and all kinds of beautiful evergreens thrive luxuriantly in every season. 

The green and hot-houses, which form a front of three hundred feet, con- 
sist only of stone, iron and glass ; a style of building which has here the 
additional advantage of being cheaper than that with wood. 

I was interested by a kind of chain, the links of which consisted of 
scythes, for the purpose of clearing the large standing waters (a defect in 
most English parks) : by merely drawing it, like a drag-net, along the bot- 
tom, it entirely removes the weeds. In the vast pleasure-ground twelve 
men are daily mowing from five till nine o'clock. By this means high 
grass is never to be seen there, and at the same time the disagreeable gen- 
eral mowing is avoided, which destroys the neatness of the garden for some 
days. It is true that they can do only a part daily ; but it is so managed 



62 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

that they finish a certain allotted portion, and they come round so often that 
the difference in the turf is not perceptible. This short grass is, indeed, 
quite lost to economy ; but beauty and utility cannot always be combined, 
and the latter must certainly be subordinate in a pleasure-ground, or it is 
better to relinquish all pretensions to one. Kew, which is on the opposite 
bank of the river, unquestionably possesses the most complete collection 
of exotic plants in Europe. The park has also a great advantage in its 
beautiful situation on the Thames, but is in general rather neglected. Yew 
trees are found here of the height of our firs, and very fine specimens of 
holly and evergreen oak; in other respects the old Queen's plantations are 
not very tasteful. 

Wimbledon Park, stretching over several hills and full of beautiful groups 
of trees, present fine views, but the effect of the whole is spoiled by some 
degree of monotony. 

House is very near, and almost in the suburbs of London : its ar- 
chitecture is not without interest. 

I tell you nothing of the enchanting valley of Richmond. Every travel- 
ler falls into an ecstacy about it, and with justice; but he does not always 
excite a similar feeling in the reader by his descriptions. I therefore avoid 
them, and remark only that the excellent aristocratic inn (the Star and Gar- 
ter,) from which one overlooks this paradise, whilst one's corporeal wants 
are admirably provided for, enhances the pleasure. Solitude and tranquil- 
lity joined to every comfort of life, in a country beautiful above all expres- 
sion, powerfully invite to enjoyment. 

In the evening I took R to the Adelphi Theatre. It is small and 

neat, and distinguished for the goodness of its machinery ; just now, too, 
it possesses several excellent actors. One of them played the drunkard 
more naturally than I ever saw it. It is true that he has more facilities here 
for the study of that state of mind, — for the same reason that the ancients 
represented the naked figure better than our artists, — namely, because they 
saw it more frequently. An excellent trait of real life was, that the drunk- 
ard, who cherished a tender passion for a young and poor girl in the house 
where he lodged, when sober formed other projects, but in his drunken fits 
invariably returned with tears ' a ses anciennes amours,' and in that state of 
mind was at length happily brought to marry her. 

December 23d. 

Many thanks for the news from B . I am particularly pleased that 

Alexander Von Humboldt is employed by Government. It must give 
pleasure to every patriot to see a man like him at length fixed in his native 
country, which is so justly proud of his fame in all parts of. the world. It 
must be a happy occurrence too for many circles there, in which the salt 
will at length be mingled, the want of which has so long rendered them 
quite unpalatable. 

How much I lament the accident which has befallen our good and noble 

King, (and I had already learned it from L ,) you can easily imagine, 

as you know my feelings on that subject; but I hope to God that his strong 
constitution, and the help of such skilful men, will remove every remaining 
evil. How rare, and how beautiful, to hear a whole nation exclaim with one 
heart and mind, " May heaven preserve to us our beloved Monarch !"* 

My own state of spirits is, ' au reste,' somewhat of the same melancholy 

* This is no exaggeration, as those who have had any opportunity of observing 
the strong personal attachment of the Prussian people to their present King can 
attest.— Trans. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 63 

cast, probably from the everlasting fogs, which are often so bad that one is 
obliged to light candles in the middle of the day, and yet cannot see. ' Le 
pire est, que je suis tantot trop, et tantot trop pen sensible a l'opinion et aux 
procedes des autres.' In the former disposition, (and dispositions unfortu- 
nately govern me with despotic power,) they not only make me sad or cheer- 
ful, but, what is worse, wise or foolish. I sometimes appear to myself like 
a person who has climbed up a ladder of ropes, where his hands have grown 
benumbed; and after hanging for a long time near the top, and endeavouring 
to get still higher, is now on the point of being obliged to let go, and fall 
down again to the bottom. And yet, perhaps, when once arrived on the 
level plain of common-place and obscurity, he may be more tranquil than in 
the stormy breezes ; and though his hopes be less, he may be surrounded by 
a happier, though a more simple reality. But a truce to such vain specula- 
tions. They are unprofitable, and even fears of a threatening real misfor- 
tune ought always to be forcibly banished; for why torment ourself with 
anxieties about that which may come, and yet perhaps never does come; 
yet, as a mere dreamy phantom, has embittered so much of a present which 
might otherwise have been cheerful ? 

In all such states of mind, your image is my best comfort ; and to you, 
my only and unchanging friend, I turn at length with tearful eyes, and tender 
gratitude for all your manifold love, kindness and indulgence. In your faith- 
ful bosom I deposit my grief as well as my joy, and all my hopes ; the most 
brilliant fulfilment of which would, without you, lose all value for me. 

But now I must leave you, as my duty requires, (for otherwise I would 
not,) to go to a large party ; where I am destined, as in life, to lose myself 
in the multitude. It is, I think, my last visit to the gay world, as I am pre- 
paring to set out on a park-and-garden journey with B , which probably 

will take us a month. The present season is indeed just the best for him 
who wishes to make landscape-gardening a study, for the leafless trees afford 
a clear and free view in all directions ; one can thus see the whole artificial 
landscape in a single tour, understand the effects produced, and judge of the 
whole like a plan on paper ; as well as distinguish the parts of every plan- 
tation in their intended order. 

Yesterday we visited, ' en attendant,' the parks in town, — Kensington 
Gardens ; — Regent's park, ' en detail,' &c, on which occasion we did not 
omit to look in at the Diorama exhibited there. This far surpassed my ex- 
pectations, and all that I had formerly seen of the same kind. It is certainly 
impossible to deceive the senses more effectually ; even with the certitude 
of illusion one can hardly persuade himself it exists. The picture repre- 
sented the interior of a large abbey-church, appearing perfectly in its real 
dimensions. A side door is open, ivy climbs through the windows, and the 
sun occasionally shines through the door, and lightens with a cheering beam 
the remains of coloured windows, glittering through cobwebs. Through the 
opposite window at the end you see the neglected garden of the monastery, 
and above it, single clouds in the sky, which, flitting stormily across, occa- 
sionally obscure the sunlight, and throw deep shadows over the church- 
tranquil as death ; where the crumbled but magnificent remains of an ancient 
knight reposes in gloomy majesty. 

As our departure is fixed for to-morrow, I send off this letter, although it 
has not yet grown to the usual corpulence. How slender are yours in com- 
parison ! Certainly, whenever our descendants find the dusty correspon- 
dence of their ancestors in a corner of the old library, they will be equally 
astonished at my prodigality and at your avarice, ' A propos,' do not be 

too dissipated in B , and forget not, even for the shortest time, 

The most faithful of your friends, L. 



64 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



LETTER VIII. 

Watford, December 25, 1826. 
Dear Friend, 

This morning we started, — unluckily in bad rainy weather. Ten miles 
from London we commenced operations with the inspection of two villas 
and a large park, near the pretty little village of Stanmore. The first villa 
was thoroughly in the rural Gothic style, with ornamented pointed gables ; 
a ' genre' in which English architects are peculiarly happy. The interior 
was also most prettily fitted up in the same style, and at the same time ex- 
tremely comfortable and inviting. Even the doors in the walls surrounding 
the kitchen-garden were adorned with windows of coloured glass at the top, 
which had a singular and beautiful brilliancy among the foliage. The little 
flower-garden, too, was laid out in beds of Gothic forms surrounded by gra- 
vel walks, and the fancy had not a bad effect. 

Very different was the aspect of the other villa, in the Italian taste, with 
large vases before it, filled not with flowers but with green and yellow gourds 
and pumpkins. A superabundance of wooden statues, painted white, deco- 
rated, or rather deformed, the gardens. Among them a roaring rampant lion 
vainly sought to inspire terror, and a Cupid hanging in a bush threatened, 
as abortively, the passengers with his darts. 

The Priory, formerly a religious house, now the seat of Lord Aberdeen, 
has many beauties. The number of magnificent firs and pines in the park 
give it a singularly foreign air. The simple beautiful house is almost con- 
cealed amid trees of every size and form, so that one catches only glimpses 
of it glancing between the shrubs, or overtopping the high trees. This is 
always very advantageous to buildings, especially those of an antique char- 
acter. One seldom sees here those unbroken views over a long and narrow 
strip of level grass, but which have no other effect than that of making dis- 
tance appear less than it really is. We walked about the grounds for a con- 
siderable time, while a bevy of young ladies and gentlemen of the family 
came around us, mounted on small Scotch poneys; and one of the latter, a 
pretty boy, attached himself to us as guide, and showed us the interior of 
the house, whose dark walls were most luxuriantly clothed, up to the very 
roof, with ivy, pomegranate and China-rose. It was twilight before we 
quitted the park, and in half an hour we reached the little town of Watford, 

where I am now reposing in a good inn. R takes this opportunity of 

commending himself most respectfully to you, and is writing very busily in 
his journal, which makes me laugh. 

I must just remark, that at Stanmore Priory we saw (I steal it out of the 
fore-named journal) a single rhododendron standing abroad, fifteen feet high, 
and covering a circumference of at least twenty-five feet with its thick 
branches. Such vegetation is more inviting to ' parkomanie' than ours. 

Woburn, December 26th. 

We have made a calculation, dear Julia, that if you were with us (a wish 
ever present to the minds of your faithful servants) you could not, with your 
aversion to foot-exercise, see above a quarter of a park a-day ; and that it 
would take you at least four hundred and twenty years to see all the parks 
in England, of which there are doubtless at least a hundred thousand, for 
they swarm whichever way you turn your steps. Of course we visit only 
the great ones, or look, ' en passant,' at any little villa that particularly 
strikes and pleases us. Notwithstanding this, we have seen so many proud 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 65 

and magnificent seats to-day, that we are still in perfect rapture at them. 
For I, you know, never could subscribe to the rule of the ' nil admirari,' 
which cramps and destroys our best enjoyments. 

Before I begin my description, I must, however, give the excellent inns 
their meed of praise. In the country, even in small villages, you find them 
equally neat and well attended. Cleanliness, great convenience, and even 
elegance, are always combined in them ; and a stranger is never invited to 
eat, sit and sleep in the same room, as in the German inns, in which there 
are generally only ball-rooms and bed-chambers. 

The table-service generally consists of silver and porcelain : the furniture 
is well contrived ; the beds always excellent ; and the friendly, flickering 
fire never fails to greet you. 

A detailed description of this morning's breakfast will give you the best 
idea of the wants and the comfortable living of English travellers. 

N. B. I had ordered nothing but tea. The following is what I found set 
out when I quitted my bed-room, — in a little town scarcely so extensive as 
one of our villages. In the middle of the table smoked a large tea-urn, pret- 
tily surrounded by silver tea-canisters, a slop-basin, and a milk-jug. There 
were three small Wedgwood plates, with as many knives and forks, and 
two large cups of -beautiful porcelain : by them stood an inviting plate of 
boiled eggs, another ' ditto' of broiled ' oreilles de cochon a la Sainte Mene- 
hould ;' a plate of muffins, kept warm by a hot water-plate ; another with 
cold ham ; flaky white bread, ' dry and buttered toast,' the best fresh butter 
in an elegant glass vessel ; convenient receptacles for salt and pepper, Eng- 
lish mustard and ' moutarde de maille ;' lastly, a silver tea-caddy, with very 
good green and black tea. 

This most luxurious meal, — which I hope you will think I have described 
as picturesquely as a landscape, — is, moreover, in proportion very cheap ; 
for it was charged in the bill only two shillings (16 Gr.). Travelling is 
however, on the whole, very expensive, — especially the posting (which is 
exactly four times as much as with us,) and the fees which you are ex- 
pected to be giving all day long, in all directions, to every species of servant 
and attendant. 

At ten o'clock we reached Cashiobury Park, the seat of the Earl of Essex. 

I sent in my name to him ; upon which his son-in-law, Mr. F , (whom 

I had formerly known in Dresden, and with whom I was happy to renew 
my acquaintance,) came to conduct me about. The house is modern Gothic, 
and magnificently furnished. You enter a hall with coloured windows, 
which afford a view into an inner court laid out as a flower-garden : leaving 
the hall, you go through a long gallery on the side, hung with armour, to 
the rich carved oak staircase leading to the library, which here generally 
serves as principal drawing-room. The library has two small cabinets look- 
ing on the garden, and filled with rarities. Among these I was particularly 
pleased with two numerous sketches by Denon, representing the levee of 
Cardinal Bernis at Rome, and a dinner at Voltaire's, with the Abbe Maury, 
Diderot, Helvetius, d'Alembert, and other philosophers, — all portraits. 

I was much interested too by a complete toilet of Marie Antoinette's, on 
which the portraits of her husband and of Henry the Fourth were painted 
in several places. From the library you go into an equally rich second 
drawing-room ; and from thence into the dining-room. Near to both these 
rooms was a green-house, in the form of a chapel ; and in every apartment 
windows down to the ground afforded a view of the noble park and the river 
flowing through it. On a distant rising ground you look along a very broad 

9 



66 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

avenue of limes, exactly at the end of which, during a part of the summer, 
the sun sets : its horizontal rays passing along the whole length of the green- 
house must afford the most splendid natural decoration, heightened by the 
reflection of its beams from a large mirror at the end. The walls of the 
dining-room are covered with oaken ' boiserie,' with beautiful cornices and 
carving; the furniture is of rose-wood, silk and velvet; and valuable pic- 
tures in antique gilded frames adorn the walls. The proportions of the 
room may be called hall-like, and the whole is regularly heated to a tempe- 
rature of fourteen degrees of Reaumur. 

The somewhat remote stables and all the domestic offices, &c, are on 
the left, connected with the house by an embattled wall; so that the build- 
ing extends along an uninterrupted length of a thousand feet. 

The flower-gardens occupy a very considerable space. Part of them are 
laid out in the usual styie ; that is, a long green-house at the bottom, in 
front of which are several ' berceaux' and shady walks around a large grass- 
plat, which is broken with beds of all forms, and doited with rare trees and 
shrubs. But here was also something new ; — a deep secluded valley of 
oval form, around which is a thick belt of evergreens, and rock-plants plant- 
ed impenetrably thick on artifical rockeries; a background of lofty fir-trees 
and oak, with their tops waving in the wind; and, at one end of the grass- 
plat, a single magnificent lime-tree surrounded by a bench. From this point 
the whole of the little valley was covered with an embroidered parterre of 
the prettiest forms, although perfectly regular. The egress from this en- 
closure lay through a grotto overgrown with ivy, and lined with beautiful 
stones and shells, into a square rose-garden surrounded with laurel hedges, 
in the centre of which is a temple, and opposite to the entrance a conser- 
vatory for aquatic plants. The rose-beds are cut in various figures, which 
intersect each other. A. walk, overarched with thick beeches neatly trimmed 
with the shears, winds in a sinuous line from this point to the Chinese gar- 
den, which is likewise enclosed by high trees and walls, and contains a 
number of vases, benches, fountains, and a third green-house, — all in the 
genuine Chinese style. Here were beds surrounded by circles of white, 
blue, and red sand, fantastic dwarf plants, and many dozens of large China 
vases placed on pedestals, thickly overgrown with trailing evergreens and 
exotics. The windows of the house were painted like Chinese hangings, 
and convex mirrors placed in the interior, which reflected us as in a ' camera 
obscura.' I say nothing of the endless rows of rich hot-houses and forcing- 
beds, nor of the kitchen-gardens. You may estimate the thing for yourself, 

when I repeat to you Mr. F 's assurance that the park, gardens, and 

house cost ten thousand a-year to keep up. The Earl has his own work- 
men in every department ; masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, &c, each 
of whom has his prescribed province. One has, for instance, only to keep 
the fences in order, another the rooms, a third the furniture, &c. ; a plan 
well worthy of imitation in the country. 

I paid my visit to the venerable Earl, who kept his chamber with the 
gout, and received from the kind friendly old man the best information, and 
some (highly necessary) cards of admittance for my further journey. 

Our road lay for a long time through the park, till we reached one of the 
principal features in it, called the Swiss Cottage, which stands in a lovely 
secluded spot in the midst of a grove on the bank of the river. We drove 
over the turf; for, as I have told you, many parks here are quite like free 
uncultivated ground, and have often only one road, which leads up to the 
house and out on the other side. Having regained the high road, we drove 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 67 

along twenty miles of country, all equally beautiful, equally luxuriant in 
fertility and vegetation, and at five o'clock reached Ashridge Park, the seat 
of the Earl of Bridgewatcr. Here you can follow me better, dear Julia, if 
you open Repton's book, in which you will find several views, and the 
ground-plan of this charming garden, winch old Rep ton himself laid out. 
Remember the ' Rosary,' and you will immediately know where to look 
for it. This park is one of the largest in England, for it is nearly three 
German miles in circumference ; and the house which, like Cashiobury, is 
modern Gothic, is almost endless, with all its walls, towers, and courts. I 
must, however, frankly confess, that this modern Gothic (' castellated') 
style, which looks so fairy-like on paper, in reality often strikes one not 
only as tasteless, but even somewhat absurd, from its overloaded and incon- 
gruous air. 

If in the midst of the most cultivated, peaceful fields, amid the mingled 
beauties of countless flowers, you see a sort of fortress, with turrets, loop- 
holes, and battlements, not one of which has the slightest purpose or utility, 
and, moreover, many of them standing on no firmer basis than glass walls 
(the green-houses and conservatories connected with the apartments,) — it is 
just as ridiculous and incongruous, as if you were to meet the possessor of 
these pretty flower-gardens walking about in them in helm and harness. 
The antique, the old Italian, or merely romantic* style, adapted to our times, 
harmonizes infinitely better with such surrounding objects, has a more cheer- 
ful character, and even, with smaller masses, a much grander and more ma- 
jestic air. 

The interior of this house has certainly the most striking effect, and may 
truly be called princely. The possessor has very wisely limited himself to 
few, but large, 'entertaining-rooms. You enter the hall, which is hung with 
armour and adorned with antique furniture. You then come to the stair- 
case, the most magnificent in its kind that can be imagined. Running up 
three lofty stories, with the same number of galleries, it almost equals the 
tower of a church in height and size : the walls are of polished stone, the 
railings of bright brass, the ceiling of wood beautifully carved in panels and 
adorned with paintings, and around each landing-place or gallery are niches 
with statues of the Kings of England in stone. Ascending this staircase 
we reached a drawing-room decorated with crimson velvet and gilded furni- 
ture, lighted in front by enormous windows which occupy nearly the whole 
side of the room, and disclose the view of the ' pleasure-ground' and park. 
Sidewards, on the left, is another room as large, in which are a billiard- 
table and the library. On the other side, in the same suite, is the dining- 
room"; and behind it a noble green-house and orangery, through which you 
pass into the chapel, which is adorned with ten windows of genuine antique 
painted glass, and with admirable carvings in wood. All the benches are of 
walnut-tree, covered with crimson velvet. 

In the rooms are some fine and interesting pictures, but most of them by 
modern artists. The pleasure-grounds and gardens are still larger than those 
at Cashiobury. You will find a part of them in Repton, viz. the American 
garden, the Monk's garden, and the Rosary; to which I must add, first, the 
very elegant French garden, with a covered gallery, on one side; a porce- 
lain-like ornament with flower-pots in the centre ; and a large parterre, every 

* By 'romantic' the author apparently means the style of the domestic architecture 
of Elizabeth's and the succeeding 1 reigns, which affected nothing like the air of places 
of defence Transl. 



68 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

bed of which is filled with a different sort of flower : secondly, the Rockery, 
in which are to be found every kind of rock and creeping plant. Nothing 
but the long habit of great luxury could enable people even to conceive a 
whole so manifold, so equally exemplary in all its parts, and in such perfect 
order and condition ; for we must confess that even our sovereigns possess 
only fragments of what is here found united. Some thousand head of deer, 
and countless groups of giant trees, animate and adorn the park, which with 
the exception of the road leading through it, is left wholly to nature, and to 
its numerous grazing herds. 

Accept it as a small sacrifice, dear Julia, that I send you all these minute 
details. They may not be useless in our own plans and buildings, and are 
at least more tedious to write than to read.* 

For better illustration, I take sketches of everything interesting, which will 
stand us in good stead, as furnishing new ideas. In the morning we are 
going to see Woburn Abbey, the seat of the Duke of Bedford, one of the 
richest peers of England, which is said to exceed Ashbridge in extent and 
grandeur, as much as that does Cashiobury ; a very agreeable climax. 

The inn whence I write is again very good, and I purpose, after all my 
fatigues, to do as much honour to my principal meal as I did to my break- 
fast; though the former is here far more simple, and consists of the same 
dishes day after day. The eternal 'mutton chops' and a roast fowl with 
4 bread sauce,' with vegetables boiled in water, and the national sauce, melt- 
ed butter with flour, always play the principal part. 

Leamington, Dec. 2\st. 

I am now in a large watering-place, of which, however, I have as yet seen 
but little, as I only arrived at eleven o'clock last night. The greater part of 
the day was spent in seeing Woburn Abbey. This beautiful palace is in the 
Italian taste ; the design simple and noble, and infinitely more satisfactory 
than the- colossal would-be-Gothic ' nonsense.' 

Its stables, riding-school, ball-rooms, statue and picture galleries, conser- 
vatories and gardens, form a little town. For three centuries this estate has 
been transmitted in a direct line in this family, — even in England a rare in- 
stance ; — so that it is not to be wondered at, if, with an income of a million 
of our money, an accumulation of luxury and magnificence has been formed 
here, far exceeding the powers of any private person in our country : and 
indeed even were money here and there forthcoming in like profusion, yet 
the state of society adapted for centuries to the providing of the materials 
for a luxury so refined, and so complete in all its parts, exists not among us. 

The house, properly speaking, is a regular quadrangle ; and the ' bel 
etage,' which is always ' de plein pied' in country-houses, forms an unbroken 
suite of rooms, occupying the whole superficial extent. These rooms are 
hung with valuable pictures, and richly furnished with massive and magni- 
ficent stuffs ; the ceilings and the ' embrasures' of the doors are of white 
plaster with gold ornaments, or of rare carved wood, — all equally simple and 
massy. In one room was a remarkable collection of miniature portraits of 
the family, from the first Russell (the name of the Dukes of Bedford) to the 
present Duke, in an unbroken line. Under such circumstances, a man may 
be permitted to be a little proud of his family and his noble blood.t These 

* I know not whether the reader will admit this apology. — Editor. 
f It would have been but an act of justice had the author added, that under these 
very circumstances, not only the head of the family, but those who bear his illustrious 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 69 

miniatures were arranged in a very tasteful manner on crimson velvet, in a 
long narrow gold frame, and set like medallions. The stoves are mostly of 
gilt metal, with high marble chimney-pieces ; the chandeliers of bronze, 
richly-gilded ; everywhere the same magnificence, yet nowhere overloaded. 
The library is at the end, divided into two rooms, and opening immediately 
on the delightful garden with wide glass doors. 

The gardens appear to me peculiarly charming, so admirably interwoven 
with the buildings and so varied that it is difficult to describe them ade- 
quately. • , 

To give you at least a general idea of them, let me tell you, that all along 
the various buildings, which sometimes project, sometimes retreat, form now 
straight and now curved lines, runs an unbroken arcade clothed with roses 
and climbing plants. Following this, you come to a succession of differ- 
ent and beautiful gardens. Over the arcade are partly chambers, partly the 
prettiest little green-houses. One of them contains nothing but heaths, 
hundreds of which, in full blow, present the loveliest picture, endlessly mul- 
tiplied by walls of mirror. Immediately under this, Erica-house was the 
garden for the same tribe of plants ; a glass-plat with beds of various forms, 
all filled with the larger and hardier sorts of heath. In one place the bow- 
ery-walk leads quite through a lofty Palm-house, before which lie the most 
beautiful embroidered parterres, intersected with gravel walks. Adjoining 
this house is the statue-gallery, the walls of which are covered with various 
sorts of marble; there are also very beautiful pillars from Italy. It contains 
a number of antique sculptures, and is terminated at either end by a temple, 
the one dedicated to Freedom, and adorned with busts of Fox, &c, the other 
to the Graces, with Canova's exquisite group of the tutelary goddesses. 
From this point the arcade leads along an interminable plantation, on a 
sloping bank entirely filled with azaleas and rhododendrous, till you reach 
the Chinese garden, in which 'the Dairy' is a prominent and beautiful ob- 
ject. It is a sort of Chinese temple, decorated with a profusion of white 
marble and coloured glasses ; in the centre is a fountain, and round the walls 
hundreds of large dishes and bowls of Chinese and Japan porcelain of every 
form and colour, filled with new milk and cream. The 'consoles' upon 
which these vessels stand are perfect models for Chinese furniture. The 
windows are of ground glass, with Chinese painting, which shows fantasti- 
cally enough by the dim light. 

A further pleasure-ground, with the finest trees and many beautiful sur- 
prises, — among others pretty children's gardens, and a grass garden in 
which all sorts of gramineous plants were cultivated in little beds, forming a 
sort of chequer-work, — led to the Aviary.* This consists of a large place 
fenced in, and a cottage, with a small pond in the centre, all dedicated to 
the feathered race. Here the fourth or fifth attendant awaited us, (each of 
whom expects a fee, so that you cannot see such an establishment under 
some pounds sterling,) and showed us 'first several gay-plumed parrots and 
other rare birds, each of whom had his own dwelling and little garden. 
These birds' houses were made of twigs interwoven with wire, the roof 
also of wire, the shrubs around evergreen, as were almost all the other plants 
in this enclosure. As we walked out upon the open space which occupies 
the centre, our Papageno whistled, and in an instant the air was literally 

name, and are destined to inherit his honours, are singularly free from the morgue and 
arrogance with which he justly charges the English aristocracy — Transl. 



70 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

darkened around us by flights of pigeons, chickens, and heaven knows what 
birds. Out of every bush started gold and silver, pied and common, phea- 
sants ; and from the little lake a black swan galloped heavily forward, ex- 
pressing bis strong desire for food in tones like those of a fretful child. This 
beautiful bird, raven black with red feet and bill, was exceedingly tame, ate 
his food ' chemin faisant' out of the keeper's pocket, and did not leave us 
for a moment while we were sauntering about the birds' paradise, only now 
and then pushing away an intrusive duck or other of the vulgar herd, or 
giving a noble gold pheasant a dig in the side. A second interesting but 
imprisoned inhabitant of this place was Hero, an African crane, a creature 
that looks as if it were made of porcelain, and frequently reminded me in 
his movements of our departed dancing Ballerino. The incident of his his- 
tory which had gained him his lofty name was unknown to the keeper. 

The park, which is four German miles in circuit, does not consist mere- 
ly of heath or meadow-land and trees, but has a fine wood, and also a very 
beautiful part fenced in, called the ' Thornery,' a wild sort of copse inter- 
sected with walks and overgrown with thorns and brushwood ; in the midst 
of which stands a little cottage with the loveliest flower-garden. 

Here terminate the splendours of Woburn Abbey. But no — two things 
I must still mention. In the house, the decorations of which I have describ- 
ed to you ' en gros,' I found a very ingenious contrivance. Round all the 
apartments of the great quadrangle runs an inner wide gallery, on which se- 
veral doors open ; and a variety of collections, some open, some in glass 
cases, and here and there interspersed with stands of flowers, are set out. 
This affords a walk as instructive as it is agreeable in winter or bad weather, 
and is rendered perfectly comfortable by the ' conduits de chaleur,' which 
heat the whole house. — The second remarkable thing is a picture of the 
Earl of Essex as large as life. He is represented as of a fine and slender 
person, but not a very distinguished face ; small features without much ex- 
pression, small eyes, and a large red beard with dark hair. 

But I have written off a quarter of an inch of my finger, and must con- 
clude. To-morrow another step in the ascending scale, for I must see War- 
wick Castle, which is spoken of as England's pride. I am curious to see 
if we can really mount higher ; hitherto we have certainly ascended from 
beautiful to more beautiful. 

As the mail is just going off I enclose this to L , who will have the 

kindness to forward it to you more quickly than it would otherwise go. 

Think of the wanderer in your tranquil solitude, and helicve that if fate 
drove him to the antipodes, his heart would ever be near you. 

• * YourL . 



LETTER IX. 

Warwick, Dec. 26th, 1826. 
Dear Julia, 

Now, indeed, for the first time, I am filled with real and unbounded en- 
thusiasm. What I have hitherto described was a smiling country, combined 
with everything that art and money could produce. I left it with a feeling 
of satisfaction ; and, although ] have seen things like it, — nay, even possess 
them, — not without admiration. But what I saw to-day was more than that, 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 71 

— it was an enchanted palace decked in the most charming garb of poetry, 
and surrounded by all the majesty of history, the sight of which still fills 
me with delighted astonishment. 

You, accomplished reader of history and memoirs, know better than I 
that the Earls of Warwick were once the mightiest vassals of England, and 
that the great Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, boasted of having deposed three 
kings, and placed as many on the vacant throne. This was his castle, 
standing ever since the ninth century, and in the possession of the same fa- 
mily since the reign of Elizabeth. A tower of the castle, said to have been 
built by Beauchamp himself, remains unaltered ; and the whole stands co- 
lossal and mighty, like an embodied vision of former times. 

From a considerable distance you see the dark mass of stone towering 
above the primawal cedars, chestnuts, oaks and limes. It stands on the 
rocks on the shore of the Avon, and rises to a perpendicular height of two 
hundred feet above the level of the water. Two towers of different forms 
overtop the building itself almost in an equal degree. A ruined pier of a 
bridge, overhung with trees, stands in the middle of the river, which becom- 
ing deeper just at the point where the building begins, forms a foaming wa- 
terfall, and turns a mill, which appears only like a low abutment of the cas- 
tle. Going on, you lose sight of the castle for awhile, and soon find your- 
self before a high embattled wall, built of large blocks of stone covered by 
Time with moss and creeping plants. Lofty iron gates slowly unfold to 
admit you to a deep hollow way blasted in the rock, the stone walls of 
which are tapestried with the most luxuriant vegetation. The carriage 
rolled with a heavy dull sound along the smooth rock, which old oaks dark- 
ly overshadow. Suddenly, at a turn of the way, the castle starts from the 
wood into broad open daylight, resting on a soft grassy slope ; and the large 
arch of the entrance dwindles to the size of an insignificant doorway be- 
tween the two enormous towers, at the foot of which you now stand. A 
still greater surprise now awaits you when you pass through -the second 
iron gate into the court-yard: it is almost impossible to imagine anything 
more picturesque, and at the same time more imposing. 

Let your fancy conjure up a space about twice as large as the interior of 
the Colosseum at Rome, and let it transport you into a forest of romantic 
luxuriance. You now overlook the large court, surrounded by mossy trees 
and majestic buildings, which, though of every variety of form, combine to 
create one sublime and connected whole, whose lines now shooting upwards, 
now falling oft' into the blue air, with the continually changing beauty of the 
green earth beneath, produce, not symmetry indeed, but that higher harmo- 
ny, elsewhere proper to Nature's own works alone. The first glance at 
your feet falls on a broad simple carpet of turf, around which a softly wind- 
ing gravel-walk leads to the entrance and exit of the gigantic edifice. Look- 
ing backwards, your eye rests on the two black towers, of which the oldest, 
called Guy's Tower, rears its head aloft in solitary threatening majesty, high 
above all the surrounding foliage, and looks as if cast in one mass of solid 
iron ; — the other, built by Beauchamp, is half hidden by a pine and a chest- 
nut, the noble growth of centuries. Broad-leaved ivy and vines climb along 
the walls, here twining around the tower, there shooting up to its very sum- 
mit. On your left lie the inhabited part of the castle, and the chapel, orna- 
mented witli many lofty windows of various size and form ; while the oppo- 
site side of the vast quadrangle, almost entirely without windows, presents 
only a mighty mass of embattled stone, broken by a few larches of colossal 
height, and huge arbutuses which have grown to a surprizing size in the 



72 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

shelter they have so long enjoyed. But the sublimest spectacle yet awaits 
you, when you raise your eyes straight before you. On this fourth side, 
the ground, which has sunk into a low bushy basin forming the court, and 
with which the buildings also descend for a considerable space, rises again 
in the form of a steep conical hill, along the sides of which climb the rugged 
walls of the castle. This hill, and the keep which crowns it, are thickly 
overgrown at the top with underwood, which only creeps round the foot of 
the towers and walls. Behind it, however, rise gigantic venerable trees, 
towering above all the rock-like structure. Their bare stems seem to float 
in upper air ; while at the very summit of the building rises a daring bridge, 
set, as it were, on either side within trees ; and as the clouds drift across the 
blue sky, the broadest and most brilliant masses of light break magically 
from under the towering arch and the dark coronet of trees. 

Figure this to yourself; — behold the whole of this magical scene at one 
glance ; — connect with it all its associations ; — think that here nine centu- 
ries of haughty power, of triumphant victory and destructive overthrow, of 
bloody deeds and wild greatness, — perhaps too of gentle love and noble mag- 
nanimity, — have left, in part, their visible traces, and where they are not, 
their vague romantic memory; — and then judge with what feelings I could 
place myself in the situation of the man to whom such recollections are daily 
suggested by these objects, — recollections which, to him, have all the sanc- 
tity of kindred and blood ; — the man who still inhabits the very dwelling of 
that first possessor of the fortress of Warwick, that half-fabulous Guy, who 
lived a thousand years ago, and whose corroded armour, together with a 
hundred weapons of renowned ancestors, is preserved in the antique hall. 
Is there a human being so unpoetical as not to feel that the glories of such 
memorials, even to this very day, throw a lustre around the feeblest repre- 
sentative of such a race? 

To make my description in some degree clear, I annex a ground-plan, 
which may help your imagination. You must imagine the river at a great 
depth below the castle-plain, and not visible from the point I have been 
describing. The first sight of it you catch is from the castle windows, to- 
gether with the noble park, whose lines of wood blend on every side with 
the horizon. 

You ascend from the court to the dwelling-rooms by only a few steps, 
first through a passage, and thence into the hall, on each side of which ex- 
tend the entertaining-rooms in an unbroken line of three hundred and forty 
feet. Although almost ' de plein pied' with the court, these rooms are more 
than fifty feet above the Avon, which flows on the other side. From eight 
to fourteen feet thickness of wall forms, in each window-recess, a complete 
closet, with the most beautiful varied view over the river, wildly foaming 
below, and further on flowing through the park in soft windings, till lost in 
the dim distance. Had I till now, from the first sight of the castle, advanced 
from surprise to surprise, — all this was surpassed, though in another way, 
by what awaited me in the interior. I fancied myself transported back into 
by-gone ages as I entered the gigantic baronial hall, — a perfect picture of 
Walter Scott's ; — the walls panelled with carved cedar; hung with every 
kind of knightly accoutrement; spacious enough to feast trains of vassals, — 
and saw before me a marble chimney-piece under which I could perfectly 
well walk with my hat on, and stand by the fire, which blazed like a funeral 
pile from a strange antique iron grate in the form of a basket, three hundred 
years old. On the side, true to ancient custom, was a stack of oak logs piled 
up upon a stand of cedar, which was placed on the stone floor partially co- 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 73 

vered by ' hautelisse' carpets. A man-servant dressed in brown, whose 
dress, with his gold knee-bands, epaulets and trimmings, had a very antique 
air, fed the mighty tire from time to time with an enormous block. Here, 
in every circumstance, the difference between the genuine old feudal great- 
ness and the modern imitations was as striking, as that between the moss- 
grown remains of the weather-beaten fortress and the ruins built yesterday 
in the garden of some rich contractor. Almost every tiling in the room was 
old, stately, and original ; nothing tasteless or incongruous, and all preserved 
with the greatest care and affection. Among them were many rich and rare 
articles which could no longer be procured, — silk, velvet, gold and silver 
blended and interwoven. The furniture consists almost entirely either of 
uncommonly rich gilding, of dark brown carved walnut or oak, or of those 
antique French ' commodes' and cabinets inlaid with brass, the proper name 
of which I have forgotten. There were also many fine specimens of mo- 
saic, as well as of beautiful marquetry. A fire-screen, with a massy gold 
frame, consisted of a plate of glass so transparent that it was scarcely distin- 
guishable from the air. To those who love to see the cheerful blaze with- 
out being scorched, such a screen is a great luxury. In one of the cham- 
bers stands a state bed, presented to one of the Earls of Warwick by Queen 
Anne ; it is of red velvet embroidered, and is still in good preservation. The 
treasures of art are countless. Among the pictures, there was not one ' me- 
diocre ;' they are almost all by the first masters : but, beyond this, many of 
them have a peculiar family interest. There are a great many ancestral 
portraits by Titian, Van Dyk, and Rubens. The gem of the collection is 
one of Raphael's most enchanting pictures, the beautiful Joan of Arragon, — 
of whom, strangely enough, there are four portraits, each of which is de- 
clared to be genuine. Three of them must of course be copies, but are no 
longer distinguishable from the original. One is at Paris, one at Rome, one 
at Vienna, and the fourth here. I know them all, and must give unqualified 
preference to this. There is an enchantment about this spleudid woman 
which is wholly indescribable. An eye leading to the very depths of the 
soul ; queenlike majesty united with the most feminine sensibility ; intense 
passion blended with the sweetest melancholy ; and withal, a beauty of form, 
a transparent delicacy of skin, and a truth, brilliancy and grace of the dra- 
pery and ornaments, such as only a divine genius could call into perfect 
being. 

Among the most interesting portraits, both for the subject and the han- 
dling, are the following. 

First, Machiavelli, by Titian. — Precisely as I should imagine him. A 
face of great acuteness and prudence, and of suffering, — as if lamenting over 
the profoundly-studied worthless side of human nature ; that hound-like 
character which loves where it is spurned, follows where it fears, and is 
faithful where it is fed. A trace of compassionate scorn plays round the 
thin lips, while the dark eye appears turned reflectingly inward. 

It appears strange, at first sight, that this great and classic writer should 
so long have been misunderstood in the grossest manner. Either he has 
been represented as a moral scarecrow (and how miserable is Voltaire's re- 
futation of that notion !) ; or the most fantastic hypothesis is put forth, that 
his book is a satire. On more attentive observation, we arrive at the con- 
viction that it was reserved for modern times, in which politics at length 
begin to be viewed and understood from a higher and really humane point 
of view, to form a correct judgment of Machiavel's Prince. 

To all arbitrary princes — and under that name I class all those who think 

10 



74 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

themselves invested with power solely ' par la grace de Dieu' and for their 
own advantage, — all conquerors, and children of fortune, whom some chance 
has given to the people they regard as their property, — to all such as these, 
this profound and acute writer shows the true and only way to prosper; 
the exhaustive system they must of necessity follow, in order to maintain 
a power radically sprung from the soil of sin and error. His book is, and 
must ever be, the true, inimitable gospel of such rulers ; and we Prussians, 
especially, have reason to congratulate ourselves that Napoleon had learn- 
ed his Machiavel so ill ; — we should otherwise probably be still groaning 
under his yoke. 

That Machiavel felt all the value and the power of freedom, is plain, from 
many passages in his book. In one he says, " He who has conquered a 
free city, has no secure means of keeping it, but either to destroy it, or to 
people it with new inhabitants ; for no benefit a sovereign can confer will 
ever make it forget its lost freedom." 

By proving, as he incontestable* does, that such a degree of arbitrary 
power can be maintained only by the utter disregard of all morality, and by 
seriously inculcating this doctrine upon princes, he also demonstrates but 
too plainly, that the whole frame of society, in his time, contained within 
itself a principle of demoralization ; and that no true happiness, no true 
civilization, was possible to any people till that principle was detected and 
destroyed. The events of modern times, and their consequences, have at 
length opened their eyes to this truth, and they will not close them again ! 

The Duke of Alva, by Titian. — Full of expression, and, as I believe, 
faithful ; — for this man was by no means a caricature of cruelty and gloom ; 
—earnest, fantastical, proud, firm as iron ; practically exhibiting the Ideal 
of an inflexibly faithful servant, who, having once undertaken a charge, 
looks neither to the right nor to the left in the execution of it ; is ready 
blindly to fulfil the will of his God and of his master, and asks not whether 
thousands perish in torture ; in a word, a powerful mind, not base but con- 
tracted, which lets others think for it, and works to establish their authority. 

Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn, by Holbein.* — The King in a 
splendid dress, — a fat, rather butcher-like man, in whom sensuality, cun- 
ning, cruelty, and strength, rule in a frightfully complacent and almost jo- 
vial physiognomy. You see that such a man might make you tremble, and 
yet somehow attach you. Anne Boleyn is a good-natured, unmeaning, al- 
most stupid-looking, genuine English beauty, like many one sees now, only 
in another dress. 

Cromwell, by Van Dyk. — A magnificent head: somewhat of the bronze 
gladiator-look of Napoleon ; but with much coarser features, through which, 
as behind a mask, is seen the light of a great soul: enthusiasm is, however, 
too little perceptible in them. There is an expression of cunning in the eye, 
combined with something of honesty, which renders it the more deceptive; 
but not a trace of cruelty, — with that, indeed, the Protector cannot be re- 
proached. The execution of the King was a cruel act, but one which ap- 
peared to Cromwell's mind in the light of a necessary political operation, 
and in no degree sprang from a delight in bloodshed. Under this picture 
hangs Cromwell's own helmet. 

Prince Rupert, by Van Dyk. — Completely the bold soldier ! Every inch 
a cavalier! I do not mean in the exclusive sense of an adherent of the King, 

* There are so many pictures of Henry and Elizabeth in England, that you must 
forgive my frequent mention of them. There are shades of difference in all. 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 75 

but in that of an accomplished gentleman and knight: a handsome face, as 
dangerous to women as to the enemy, and the picturesque garb and port of 
a warrior. 

Elizabeth, by Holbein. — The best and perhaps the most faithful picture 
I have ever seen of her. She is represented in her prime, almost disgust- 
ingly fair, or rather white, with pale red hair. The eyes somewhat Albino- 
like, and almost without eyebrows. There is an artificial good-nature, but 
a false expression. Vehement passions and a furious temper seem to lie 
hidden under that pallid exterior, like a volcano under snow;, while the in- 
tense desire to please is betrayed by the rich and over-ornamented dress. 
Quite different, — stern, hard, and dangerous to approach, — does she appear 
in the pictures of her at an advanced age, but even then extremely over- 
dressed. 

Mary of Scotland. — Probably painted in prison, and shortly before her 
death : it has the air of a matron of forty. — There is still the faultless beauty ; 
but it is no longer the light-minded Mary, full of the enjoyment of life, and 
of her own resistless charms ; but visibly purified by misfortune, — with a 
sedate expression ; — in short, Schiller's Mary, — a noble nature, which has 
at length found itself again ! It is one of the rarest pictures of the unhappy 
Queen, whom one is accustomed to see depicted in all the splendour of 
youth and beauty. 

Ignatius Loyola, by Rubens. — A very beautifully painted and grand pic- 
ture ; but which immediately strikes one as a fiction, and no portrait. The 
sanctified expression, common to so many pictures of saints and priests, is 
unmeaning. The colouring is by far the finest thing about the picture. 

But I should never have done, were I to attempt to go through this gal- 
lery. I must take you for a minute into the furthest cabinet, which contains 
a beautiful collection of enamels, chiefly after designs by Raphael, and a 
marble bust of the Black Prince, a sturdy soldier both in head and hand, — 
at a time when the latter alone sufficed to secure the highest renown. 

Many valuable Etruscan vases and other works of art, besides the pic- 
tures and antiques, decorate the various apartments, and with great good 
taste are arranged so as to appear as harmonious accessories, instead of being 
heaped up in a gallery by themselves as dead masses. 

It was pointed out to me as a proof of the perfect and solid architecture 
of the castle, — that, in spite of its age, when all the doors of the suite of 
rooms are shut, you see the bust placed exactly in the centre of the furthest 
cabinet, through the keyholes, along a length of three hundred and fifty 
feet ; — a perfection, indeed, which our present race of workmen would never 
think of approaching. Though, as I told you, the walls of the hall are hung 
with a great quantity of armour, there is also an armoury, which is extremely 
rich. Here is the leathern collar, stained with blood blackened by time, in 
which Lord Brook, an ancestor of the present Earl, was slain at the battle 
of Litchfield. In one corner of the room lies a curious specimen of art, very 
heterogeneous with the rest, — a monkey, cast in iron, of a perfection and 
' abandon' in the disposition of the limbs which rivals Nature herself. I was 
sorry the ' chatellaine' could not tell me who had made the model for this 
cast. He must be an eminent master who could thus express all the mon- 
key grace and suppleness with such perfect fidelity, in an attitude of the 
most enjoying laziness. 

Before I quitted the princely Warwick, I ascended one of the highest 
towers, and enjoyed a rich and beautiful prospect on every side. The wea- 
ther was tolerably clear. Far more enchanting than this panorama, how- 



76 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ever, was the long walk in the gardens which surround the castle on two 
sides, whose character of serene grandeur is admirably adapted to that of the 
building. The height and beauty of the trees, the luxuriance of the vegeta- 
tion and of the turf, cannot be exceeded; while a number of gigantic cedars, 
and the ever-varying aspect of the majestic castle, through whose lofty cru- 
ciform loop-holes the rays of light played, threw such enchantment over 
the whole scene that I could hardly tear myself away. We walked about 
till the moon rose; and her light, as we looked through the darkening alleys, 
gave to all objects a more solemn and gigantic character. We could there- 
fore only see the celebrated colossal Warwick Vase by lamplight. It holds 
several hundred gallons, and is adorned with the most beautiful workman- 
ship. We also saw some ancient curiosities which are kept in the Porter's 
Lodge ; particularly some cows' horns and wild boar's tusks, ascribed to 
beasts which Guy, — a hero of Saxon times, the fabulous ancestor of the first 
Earls of Warwick, — is said to have destroyed. The dimensions of his arms, 
which are preserved here, bespeak a man of such strength and stature as 
Nature no longer produces. 

Here at length I took a lingering farewell of Warwick Castle, and laid 
the recollection, like a dream of the sublime and shadowy past, on my 
heart. I felt, in the faint moonlight, like a child who sees a fantastic giant 
head of far distant ages beckoning to it with friendly nod over the summit 
of the wood. 

With such fancies, clear Julia, I will go to sleep, and wake to meet them 
again in the morning, for another scene of romance awaits me, — the ruins 
of Kenilworth. 

Birmingham, Dec. 29th: Evening. 

I must continue my narrative. — Leamington (' car il faut pourtant que 
j'en dise quelque chose') was only a little village a few years ago, and is 
now a rich and elegant town, containing ten or twelve palace-like inns, four 
large bath-houses with colonnades and gardens, several libraries, with which 
are connected card, billiard, concert and ball-rooms (one for six hundred 
persons,) and a host of private houses, which are almost entirely occupied 
by visitors, and spring out of the earth like mushrooms. All here is on a 
vast scale, though the waters are insignificant. The same are used for 
drinking as for bathing, and yet it swarms with visitors. The baths are as 
spacious as the English beds, and are lined throughout with earthenware 
tiles. 

Not far from Leamington, and a league from Warwick, is a beautiful en- 
chanting spot called Guy's Cliff; part of the house is as old as Warwick 
Castle. Under it is a deep cavern, in the picturesque rocky shore of the 
Avon, into which, as tradition says, Guy of Warwick, after many high 
deeds at home and abroad, secretly retired to close his life in pious medita- 
tion. After two years of incessant search, his inconsolable wife found him 
lying dead in his cave, and in despair threw herself down from the rocks 
into the Avon. In later times a chapel was built in the rock to commemo- 
rate this tragic event, and adorned by Henry the Third with a statue of Sir 
Guy. This has unhappily been so mutilated by Cromwell's troops, that it 
is now but a shapeless block. Opposite to the chapel are twelve monks' 
cells hewn in the rock, now used as stables. The chapel itself, which has 
been entirely renovated in the interior, is connected with the dwelling of 
the proprietor, part of which is Gothic some centuries old, part in the old 
Italian style, and part quite new, built exactly to correspond with the most 



IRELAND AND FIIANCE. 77 

ancient part. The whole is extremely picturesque, and the interior is fitted 
up with equal attention to taste and comfort. The drawing-room, with its 
two deep window-recesses, struck me as uncommonly Cheerful. One of 
these windows stands above a rock which rises fifty feet perpendicularly 
from the river, in whose bosom lies a lovely little island, and behind it a 
wide prospect of luxuriant meadows, beautiful trees, and, quite in the back- 
ground, a village half buried in wood. At a short distance on the side is 
an extremely ancient mill, said to have been in existence before the Norman 
invasion. A little further off, the picture was terminated by a woody hill, 
also within the enclosure of the park, on which a high cross marks the spot 
where Gavestone, the infamous favourite of Edward the Second, was exe- 
cuted by the rebellious lords Warwick and Arundel. All these recollec- 
tions, united with so many natural beauties, make a strong impression on 
the mind. — The other window afforded a perfect contrast with this. It 
overlooks a level plain laid out as a very pretty French garden, in which 
gay porcelain ornaments and coloured sand mingled their hues with the 
flowers, and terminates in a beautiful alley overshadowed with ivy cut into 
a pointed arch. In the room itself sparkled a cheerful fire ; choice pictures 
adorned the walls, and several sofas of various forms, tables covered with 
curiosities, and furniture standing about in agreeable disorder, gave it the 
most inviting and home-like air. 

I returned back to the town of Warwick to see the church, and the chapel 
containing the monument of the great King-Maker, which he placed there 
in his life-time, and now reposes under. His statue of metal lies on the 
sarcophagus ; an eagle and a bear at his feet. The head is very expressive 
and natural. He does not fold his hands as is the case in most statues of 
knights, but only raises them a little to heaven, as though he would not 
pray, and could greet even his Maker only with a gesture of courtesy : his 
head is slightly inclined, but with no air of humility. Round his stone 
coffin are emblazoned the splendid bearings of all his lordships, and an enor- 
mous sword lies threatening by his side. The splendid painted windows, 
and the numerous well-preserved and richly gilded ornaments give to the 
whole a stately, solemn character. 

A family of the town most unfortunately got permission, about a hundred 
and fifty years ago, to erect a monument to some country 'squire or other, 
immediately under the large central window. It occupies the entire wall, 
and destroys the beautiful simplicity of the whole by this hideous, disgrace- 
ful modern excrescence. 

By the side-wall lies another intruder carved in stone, but one of better 
pretensions ; — no less a man than the powerful earl of Liecester : he is re- 
presented of middle age, a handsome, high-bred and haughty looking man ; 
but without the lofty genius in his features so strikingly portrayed on the 
metal countenance of the great Warwick. 

A few posts from Leamington, in a country which gradually becomes 
more solitary and dreary, lies Kenil worth. 

With Sir Walter Scott's captivating book in my hand I wandered amid 
these ruins, which call up such varied feelings. They cover a space of more 
than three-quarters of a mile in circumference, and exhibit, although in rapid 
decay, many traces of great and singular magnificence. 

The oldest part of the castle, built in 1120, still stands the firmest, while 
the part added by Leicester is almost utterly destroyed. The wide moat 
which formerly surrounded the castle, and around which stretched a park 
of thirty English miles in circuit, was dried up in Cromwell's time, in the 



78 LETTERS ON ENOLAND, 

hope of finding treasure in it. The park, too, has long disappeared, and 
is now changed into fields, on which are some scattered cottages. A part 
of the castle, standing isolated and almost hidden under creeping plants, is 
transformed into a kind of out- work ; and the whole surrounding country 
has a more barren, deserted and melancholy aspect than any part we have 
travelled through. But this harmonizes well with the character of the prin- 
cipal object, and enhances the saddening effect of greatness in such utter 
decay. 

The balcony called Elizabeth's Bower is still standing; -and the tradition 
goes, that in moonlight nights a white figure is often seen there looking 
fixedly and immovably into the depth below. The ruins of the banqueting- 
hall, with the gigantic chimney-piece, the extensive kitchen, and the wine- 
cellar beneath, are still clearly distinguishable; and many a lonesome cham- 
ber may still be standing in the towers, to which all access is cut off*. The 
fancy delights in guessing the past by what still remains ; and I often 
dreamed, while climbing among the ruins, that I had found the very spot 
where the infamous Vernon traitorously plunged the truest and most unhap- 
py of wives into eternal night. But equally lost are the traces of the crimes 
and of the virtues which lived within these walls ; Time has long since 
thrown his all-concealing veil over them; and gone are the eternally-repeated 
sorrows and joys, the mouldering splendour, and the transient struggle. 

The day was gloomy ; black clouds rolled across the heavens, and occa- 
sionally a yellow tawny light broke from between them ; the wind whistled 
among the ivy, and piped shrilly through the vacant windows ; now and 
then a stone loosened itself from the crumbling building, and rolled clatter- 
ing down the outer wall. Not a human being was to be seen ; all was soli- 
tary, awful ; — a gloomy but sublime memorial of destruction. 

Such moments are really consolatory : — we feel more vividly than at any 
other that it is not worth while to grieve and trouble ourselves about earth- 
ly things, since sorrow, like joy, lasts but for a moment. As an illustration 
of the eternal mutation of human affairs, I found myself transported in the 
evening from the mute and lifeless ruins to the prosaic tumult of a multitude, 
busied but in gain ; in the reeking, smoky, bustling manufacturing town of 
Birmingham. The last romantic sight was the flames which at night-fall 
illuminated the town on all sides from the tall chimneys of the iron-works. 
Here is an end to all sport of the fancy till more fitting time and place. 

December BOth. 

Birmingham is one of the most considerable and one of the ugliest towns 
of England. It contains a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, of 
whom two-thirds are doubtless workmen, and indeed, it presents only the 
appearance of an immeasurable workshop. 

Immediately after breakfast I went to the manufactory of Mr. Thomas- 
son, our consul here, — the second in extent. The first, — where a thousand 
workmen are daily employed, and an eighty-horse power steam-engine is 
applied to innumerable uses, even in the manufactory of livery buttons and 
pins' heads, — has been hermetically sealed to all foreigners ever since the 
visit of the Austrian princes, one of whose suite carried away some im- 
portant secret. 

I passed several hours here with great interest, though in hideous, dirty, 
and stinking holes, which serve as the various workshops ; and made a but- 
ton, which R will deliver to you as a proof of my industry. 

In a better room below are set out all the productions of the manufactory, 



1UELAND AND FRANCE. 79 

in o-old, silver, bronze, plated, and lackered wares, the latter surpassing their 
Japan originals in beauty ; steel wares of every kind ; — all in a profusion 
and elegance which really excite amazement. Among other things, I saw 
the copy of the Warwick Vase, of the same size as the original. It is cast 
in bronze, and cost four thousand pounds. I saw also magnificent table- 
services in plated ware, brought to such perfection that it is impossible to 
distinguish it from silver. The great people here often mix it among their 
plate, as the Paris ladies mix false stones and pearls with their real ones. 

I made acquaintance with a multitude of new and agreeable inventions 
of luxuries in great and small, and could not quite resist the temptation to 
buy, which is here so powerful. The trifles I bought will soon reach you 
in a well-packed box. 

The iron-works, with their gigantic steam-engines, the needle manufac- 
tory, the steel works, — where you find every article from the most delicate 
scissars to the largest grate, polished like mirrors, with all the intermediate 
' nuances,' — afford agreeable occupation for a day : — hut pardon me any 
further description of them ; ' Ce n'est pas mon metier.' 

December Slst : — Sunday. 

As the manufactories are at rest to-day, I made an excursion to Aston 
Hall, the seat of Mr. Watt, where, indeed, there is little to be seen in the 
way of gardening, but the old house contains many curious portraits. Unfor- 
tunately an ignorant porter could give me but little information about them. 

There was an extremely fine picture of Gustavus Adolphus, as large as 
life. The good-nature, dignity and prudence ; the clear honest eyes, which 
yet express much more than honesty ; and the gentle, but not the less firm, 
assurance in his whole aspect, — were in the highest degree attractive. Near 
to it stood an excellent bust of Cromwell, which I should think a better 
likeness than the picture at Warwick. It is more consonant with his his- 
toric character ; — coarse, and, if you will, vulgar features ; but a rocky na- 
ture in the whole countenance, clearly allied to that dark enthusiasm and 
demoniac cunning which so truly characterize the man. Two cannon-balls 
which Cromwell threw into the house, then fortified, and which broke the 
banisters in two places, are carefully left on the very spot where they fell, 
and the railing not repaired, — though it has since most stupidly been 
painted white even in the broken part. 

Not to lose a day, as there is nothing to see here but workshops, I intend 
to set off this evening and travel through the night to Chester. There we 
shall spend to-morrow in seeing Eaton, Lord Grosvenor's celebrated seat, 
of which I wrote you word that Bathiany gave me such a magnificent de- 
scription, and which, according to all I hear, contains whatever gold can 
procure. The day after to-morrow I shall return hither, visit some more 
manufactories, and then go back to Oxford, in the neighbourhood of which 
are two of the largest parks in England, Blenheim and Stowe. 

Chester, January 1st, 1827. 

Another year gone ! None of the worst to me, except for the separation 
from you. I lighted the lamp in the carriage and read Lady Morgan's last 
novel with great pleasure, while we rolled swifdy over the level road. As 

soon as the hand reached twelve o'clock, R congratulated me on the new 

year, for myself and for you. In twelve hours more we reached Chester, 
an ancient 'baroque' city. 

Though we had gone nineteen German miles in thirteen hours, I find that 



80 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

in England, as well as in France, as you go further from the metropolis you 
find a general deterioration ; — the inns are less excellent, the post-horses 
worse, the postilions more dirty, the dress of the people generally less respec- 
table, and the air of bustle and business less. At the same time, the dearness 
increases, and you are subjected to many extortions which, nearer to Lon- 
don, are prevented by the great competition. 

The new year set in with unfavourable weather. It rained the whole day. 
As soon as we had made a little toilet, we hastened to see the wonders of 
Eaton Hall, of which, however, my expectations were not very high. Mo- 
derate as they were, they were scarcely realized. The park and the gar- 
dens were, to my taste, the most unmeaning of any of their class I had seen, 
although of vast extent; and the house excited just the same feeling in me 
as Ashbridge, only with the difference that it is still more overloaded, and 
internally far less beautiful, though furnished still more expensively, in 
patches. You find all imaginable splendour and ostentation which a man 
who has an income of a million of our money can display; but taste not 
perhaps in the same profusion. In this chaos of modern Gothic excres- 
cences, I remarked ill-painted modern glass windows, and shapeless tables 
and chairs, which most incongi'uously affected to imitate architectural orna- 
ments. I did not find one single thing worth sketching; and it is perfectly 
inconceivable to me how M. Laine, (to whose merits in the embellishment 
of his country all must do justice,) could, in the Annals of the Berlin Hor- 
ticultural Society, prefer this to any he had seen; at which indeed his Eng- 
lish critics have made merry not a little. M. Laine imitated this garden 
in the one in front of the palace at Potsdam. In his place I should, I con- 
fess, have chosen another model ; though this style is certainly far better 
suited to the palace in question than to a Gothic castle. Treasures of art I 
saw none: the best was a middling picture by West. All the magnificence 
lay in the gorgeous materials, and the profuse display of money. The draw- 
ing-room or library, would, for size, make a very good riding-school. The 
large portraits of the possessor and his wife, in the dining-room, have little 
interest, except for their acquaintances. A number of 'affreux' little Gothic 
temples, deface the pleasure-ground, which has, moreover, no fine trees: the 
soil is not very favourable, and the whole seems laid out in comparatively 
recent times. The country is rather pretty, though not picturesque, and too 
flat. 

As we had time to spare, we visited the royal castle of Chester which is 
now converted into an excellent county gaol. The whole arrangement of it 
seemed to me most humane and perfect. The view from the terrace of the 
'corps de logis,' in which are the Courts of Justice, down upon the prisoners 
in their cells, is extremely curious and surprising. 

Imagine a high terrace of rock, on which stands a castle witli two wings. 
The ' corps de logis' is, as I said, dedicated to the courts, which are very 
spacious ; and the wings, to the prisoners for debt. The court-yard is laid 
out as a little garden, in which the debtors may walk. Under the court are 
cells in which the criminals are confined ; the further end on the right is 
appropriated to the women. The cells are separate, and radiate from a cen- 
tre ; the little piece of ground in front of each is a garden for the use of the 
prisoner, in which he is permitted to walk ; before trial his dress is gray ; 
after it, red and green. In each division of the building behind the cells is 
a large common-room, with a fire, in which the prisoners work. The cells 
are clean and airy ; the food varies with the degree of crime, — the lowest is 
bread, potatoes and salt. To-day, being new-year's-day, all the prisoners 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. SI 

had roast-beef, plum-pudding, and ale. Most of them, especially the women, 
became very animated, and made a horrible noise, with hurrahs to the health 
of the Mayor who had given them this fete. 

The view from the upper terrace, over the gardens, the prison, and a 
noble country, with the river winding below, just behind the cells ; — on the 
side, the roofs and towers of the city in picturesque confusion ; and in the 
distance, the mountains of Wales, — is magnificent, and ' a tout prendre' our 
country counsellors of justice (Obcrlandes gerichtsrathe) are seldom lodged 
so well as the rogues and thieves here. 

Thank Heaven, we set out on our return to-morrow, for I am quite weary 
of parks and sights. I am afraid you will be no less so, of my monotonous 
letters ; but as you have said A you must say B, and so prepare for a dozen 
parks before we reach London. 

Meanwhile I send my epistle thither, to afford you at least an interval, 
and pray God to have you in his merciful and faithful keeping. 

Your ever devoted L . 



LETTER X. 

Hawkestone Park, Jan. 2nd, 1827. 
Beloved friend, 

Though I felt perfectly ' blase' of parks yesterday, and thought I could 
never take any interest in them again, I am quite of another mind to-day, 
and must in some respects give Hawkestone the preference over all I have 
seen. It is not art, nor magnificence, nor aristocratical splendour, but nature 
alone, to which it is indebted for this pre-eminence, and in such a degree that, 
were I gifted with the power of adding to its beauty, I should ask, "What 
can I add ? 

Turn your imagination to a spot of ground so commandingly placed, that 
from its highest point you can let your eye wander over fifteen counties. 
Three sides of this wide panorama rise and fall in constant change of hill 
and dale, like the waves of an agitated sea, and are bounded at the horizon 
by the strangely-formed jagged outline of the Welsh mountains, which at 
either end descend to a fertile plain shaded by thousands of lofty trees, and 
in the obscure distance where it blends with the sky is edged with a white 
misty line — the ocean. 

The Welsh mountains are partly covered with snow, and all the culti- 
vated country between so thickly intersected with hedge-rows and trees, 
that at a distance it has rather the appearance of a thinly planted wood, 
here and there broken by water or by numberless fields and meadows. You 
stand directly in the centre of this scene, on the summit of a group of hills, 
looking down over the tops of groves of oaks and beeches alternating with 
the most luxuriant slopes of meadow-land, upon a wall of rock five or six 
hundred feet high, which forms numerous steep precipices and pretty val- 
leys. In one of the gloomiest spots of this wilderness arise the venerable 
ruins of ' the Red Castle,' a magnificent memorial of the time of William 
the Conqueror. 

Now imagine this whole romantic group of hills, which rises isolated 
from the very plain, to be surrounded almost in a perfect circle by the silver 
waves of the river Hawke. This naturally bounded spot is Hawkestone 
Park, a spot whose beauties are so appreciated even in the neighbourhood, 

11 



82 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

that the brides and bridegrooms of Liverpool and Shrewsbury come here to 
pass their honeymoon. The park seems indeed rather the property of the 
public than of its possessor, who never resides here, and whose ruinous and 
mean-looking house lies hidden in a. corner of the park, like a ' hors d'oeu- 
vre.' There is, however, a pretty inn, in which visitors find all that is 
needful to their comfort. Here we passed the nightj and after a good break- 
fast ' a la fourchette,' set out on our long excursion on foot ; for the roads 
are so bad that we could not drive. Our scrambling walk, almost dangerous 
in winter, lasted four hours. 

We crossed a grassy plain, shaded by oaks and covered with grazing cat- 
tle, to the rocks I have mentioned, in which the pale green veins show the 
existence of copper. They rise out of a lofty hanging wood of old beeches, 
and are crowned at their summits with black firs, the whole effect of which 
is most striking. In this natural wall is a grotto, which, after climbing wea- 
rily along a zig-zag path in the wood, you reach through a dark covered 
way more than a hundred feet long, hewn in the rock. The grotto consists 
of numerous caverns incrusted with all sorts of minerals. There are small 
openings in which are set pieces of coloured glass cut like brilliants ; in the 
dark they gleam like the precious stones of Aladdin's cave. An old woman 
was our guide, and excited our wonder by her unwearied walking, and the 
dexterity with which she climbed up and down the rocks in slippers. The 
irregular steps of stone were as smooth as glass, and so difficult sometimes 
to pass over, that our good R , who had iron heels to his boots, com- 
plained bitterly of the efforts he had to make to keep himself up. We reach- 
ed a summer-house, built of trunks and branches of trees and covered with 
moss, which commanded a picturesque view of a fantastic hill called the 
Temple of Patience. Our way then led us to the so-called Swiss Bridge, 
which is boldly thrown from one rock to another. As the railing is partly 
broken down and the passage rather a dizzy one, my good Julia, if it were 
possible for her to have come thus far, would have found an end to her ex- 
pedition. How fortunate it is to have such an unwearied guide through the 
regions of imagination — one who bears you in an instant across the giddy 
bridge, and now places you before a black tower-like rock projecting out of 
the glittering beeches, overgrown with thorns and festooned with garlands 
of ivy ! This was long the abode of a fox, who lived secure from pursuit 
in his castle of Malapartus; it is still called Reynard's House. We went 
on, up hill and down dale, and at length, rather tired, reached the terrace, an 
open place with beautiful peeps at the country cut in the wood. Not far 
from thence, behind very high trees, stands a column a hundred-and-twenty 
feet high, dedicated to the founder of the family, — a London merchant and 
Lord Mayor of London in the time of Henry the Third, — whose statue 
crowns the pillar. A convenient winding staircase in the inside leads to its 
summit, whence you overlook the panorama of fifteen counties already men- 
tioned. You pass through still wider chasms between the rocks to a lovely 
cottage, standing in complete seclusion at the end of a green valley, where 
formerly various beasts and birds were kept, which are now preserved stuff- 
ed in a room of the cottage. A young woman showed them to us, with the 
strange announcement, — ' All these animals that you see used to live for- 
merly.' I spare you the green-house built of masses of rock and branches 
of trees, and the Gothic tower — a sort of summer-house, and lead you a 
long, long way through wood, then over green hills and through a narrow 
defile to the magnificent ruin, the sublimely situated Red Castle. The de- 
cayed walls and the hewn rocky sides are of great extent. You can reach 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 83 

the interior only through a winding passage blasted in the rock, so utterly- 
dark that I found myself obliged to use my guide's petticoat as an Ariadne's 
clue, for I literally could not see my hand before my eyes. Out of this tun- 
nel you emerge into a picturesque alley of rock, with smooth high walls 
overarched with mountain-ashes. On the side you perceive a cavern, the 
mouth of which is still closed with a rusty iron gate. Climbing rude steps 
in the rock, you reach the upper part of the ruin— a high roofless tower, in 
whose walls, fifteen feet thick, many trees centuries old have struck their 
roots, and in the interior of which is a well, which appears to sink down to 
the entrails of the earth. The massy and unshaken barrier around it, the 
lofty tower through which the sky appears above, and the bottomless depth 
beneath, where reigns eternal night, produce an effect I never remember to 
have experienced. You see Hope and Despair allegorically united in one 
picture before you. The tower, and the rock on which it stands, look down 
from a giddy height, in a perfectly perpendicular line, upon the valley, in 
which the huge trees appear like copse-wood. 

By a somewhat considerable leap of the imagination you reach a New 
Zealander's hut on the banks of a little lake, built many years ago from a 
drawing of Captain Cook's, and furnished with arrows, spears, tomahawks, 
skulls of eaten enemies, and such-like pretty trifles, the innocent luxuries of 
these children of nature. 

Here we closed our walk, leaving unseen several devices which deform 
the place, and which, as well as (alas !) the paths, are somewhat in decay. 
But these defects are slight, in a whole so full of sublime and wondrously- 
varied natural beauty. 

Newport, Jan. 3rd. 

It is winter in good earnest ; — the earth covered with ice and six inches 
of snow, and the cold in the rooms, so insufficiently warmed by open fires, 
almost insufferable. As I passed the greater part of the day in the carriage, 
I have little to tell. 

Birmingham, Jan. 4th. 

To-day too we saw nothing remarkable on our road but a newly laid out park 
through which we drove, with a small but elegant garden, with very pretty 
flower-stands of various sorts, and baskets, all of fine wire, and clothed with 
creepers. R was obliged to draw them with stiff fingers. 

The inn at which we ate our luncheon bore the date 1603 carved in stone, 
and is the prettiest specimen of a cottage in an antique style, with brickwork 
in various patterns, I have met with. Towards evening we reached Bir- 
mingham, where I am reposing comfortably after the excessive cold. 

January 6th. 

The whole day has been, as in my last visit, devoted to the manufacto- 
ries and warehouses. The poor workmen, however, have a bad time of it. 
Their earnings are sufficient, it is true ; but many of their occupations are 
of such a kind that the slightest neglect or carelessness may be productive 
of the most dreadful consequences. I saw a man whose business it is to 
hold the piece of metal out of which livery buttons are stamped. He has 
had his thumbs twice shattered, and they are now only little formless lumps 
of flesh. Wo to those whose clothes approach too near to the steam-engines 
or other hideous machines ! Many a one has this inexorable power seized 
and crushed, as the boa crushes its helpless prey. Some occupations are 



84 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

as unhealthy as those of the lead-works in Siberia; and in others there is a 
stench which a stranger can scarcely endure for a minute. 

Everything has its dark side,' — this advanced state of manufacture among 
the rest; but that is no reason for rejecting it. 

Even virtue has its disadvantages when it oversteps the bounds of mode- 
ration ; while on the other hand the greatest evil, crime itself not excepted, 
has its bright spots. 

It is remarkable that, in spite of this wonderful progress in all discoveries, 
the English have not yet been able, as Mr. Thomasson assured me, to rival 
the iron-castings of Berlin. "What I saw of this kind were immeasurably 
inferior. I am sometimes tempted to think that we are arrived at that point 
at which, far as the English now excel us, they will begin to descend, and 
we to ascend. But as they have to fall from such a height, and we to rise 
from such a depth, a long time may elapse before we arrive at the meeting- 
point. However, as I said, I think we have started on the road. Deutsch- 
land, Gluck avffl if thy sons obtain but freedom, their efforts will succeed. 

Stratford-on-Jlvon, Jan. 6th. 

This day's journey was not long, but full of interest ; for the place whence 
my letter is dated is the birth-place of Shakspeare. 

It is profoundly affecting to see the familiar trifles which centuries ago 
stood in immediate and domestic contact with so great and beloved a man ; 
then to visit the place where his bones have long been mouldering ; and thus 
in a few moments to traverse the long way from his cradle to his grave. 
The house in which he was born, and the very room hallowed by this great 
event, still stand almost unchanged. The latter is perfectly like a humble 
tradesman's room, such as we commonly find them in our small towns; 
quite suited to the times when England stood on the same step of civiliza- 
tion which the lower classes still occupy with us. The walls are completely 
covered with the names of men of every country and rank ; and although I 
do not particularly like the parasitical appendages on foreign greatness, like 
insects clinging to marble palaces, yet I could not resist the impulse of gra- 
titude and veneration, which led me to add my name to the others. 

The church on the Avon (the same river which washes the noble walls 
of Warwick,) where Shakspeare lies buried, is a beautiful remnant of anti- 
quity, adorned with numerous remarkable monuments ; among which, that 
of the chief of poets is, of course, the most conspicuous. It was formerly 
painted and gilded, as was the bust ; but through the stupidity of a certain 
Malone, was whitewashed over about a century ago, by which it lost much 
of its singular character. The bust is far from having any merit as a work 
of art : it is devoid of expression, and probably, therefore, of resemblance. It 
was not without a considerable outlay of trouble and money that I succeeded 
in getting a little engraving of the monument in the original colours, — the 
last copy the clerk's wife had, as she assured me. I send it with my letter. 

I also bought in a bookseller's shop several views of the place, and of the 
objects I have mentioned. In the town-house there is a large picture of 
Shakspeare, painted in more recent times ; and a still better one of Gairick, 
which has some resemblance, not onlv in the features but the ' tournure' to 
lilland. 

Oxford, Jan. 7th. 

After having given the ' parkomanie' two days rest, we revived it to-day, 
having visited no less than four great parks, the last of which was the famous 
Blenheim. But in order: — ' Executez vous.' 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 85 

First we passed through Eastrop Park, remarkable in as far as it is of the 
time in which the French style had just begun to decline; but at this transi- 
tion period the change was as yet so slight, that avenues of clumps, of dif- 
ferent but regularly alternating figures, replaced avenues of single trees; 
and hedges were planted in serpentine lines. The whole appeared in great 
decay. 

Ditchley Park is more beautiful. Unfortunately, the English climate 
played us a sad trick to-day. In the morning (for the second time since we 
left London) the sun shone, and we were triumphing in our good luck, when 
suddenly there fell such a fog that during the whole remaining day we 
never could see a hundred steps before us, — often scarcely ten. In the 
house we found a number of good pictures, especially very fine portraits, 
but no creature could tell us whom they represented. We learned nothing 
new in our art, but we found a novelty in another department. In the 
gamekeeper's lodge, in default of spoils of nobler beasts, were about six 
dozen rats nailed up, their legs and tails displayed with great taste. 

Our third visit was to Blandford Park, belonging to Lord Churchill; very 
inconsiderable as a park, but the house contains some noble pictures. Two, 
I particularly envied the possessor. The first, a female figure, attributed, 
no doubt falsely, to Michael Angelo. The drawing is certainly bold, but 
there is a truth and elasticity in the flesh, a Titian-like colouring, and a 
lovely archness of expression, which betray no Michael Angelo, — even sup- 
pose the assertion to be false, that we possess no oil-paintings of that great 
master. 

The second riveted me still more; — a Judith ascribed to Cigoli, a painter 
whose works I do not remember to have seen. The subject is common 
enough : the triumphant virgin, with the trunkless head in her hand, has 
always appeared to me rather disgusting than attractive ; but here the artist 
has diffused an expression over Judith's elevated and captivating face, which 
appears to me to be conceived in the very spirit of poetry. 

I had rather possess good copies of such exquisite pictures, than less in- 
teresting originals by great masters : — it is the poetical not the technical part 
of a work of art that has charms for me. I pass over a fine collection of 
drawings by Raphael, Claude, and Rubens, and many interesting portraits. 

The horrid fog was thicker and thicker, and we saw Blenheim as if by 
twilight. In grandeur and magnificence it is doubtless extraordinary ; and 
I was much pleased with what I saw, or rather divined ; for it was all 
shrouded in a veil, behind which the sun appeared rayless, like the moon. 
The house is very large and regular, built, unhappily, in the- old French 
style, and truly royal in magnificence. The park is five German miles in 
circumference, and the piece of water, the finest work of its kind existing, 
occupies alone eight hundred acres. The pleasure-grounds are on an equally 
vast scale; forty men are daily employed in mowing. Opposito to the 
house the water forms a cascade, so admirably constructed of large masses 
of rock brought from a great distance, that it is difficult to believe it artificial. 

One cannot help admiring the grandeur of Brown's genius and concep- 
tions, as one wanders through these grounds : he is the Shakspeare of gar- 
dening. The plantations have attained to such a height that we saw a sin- 
gle Portugal laurel growing out of the turf, which measured two hundred 
feet in circumference. 

The present possessor, with an income of seventy thousand pounds, is so 
much in debt that his property is administered for the benefit of his credi- 
tors, and he receives five thousand a year for his life. It is a grievous pity 



86 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

that he spends this little in pulling in pieces Brown's imposing gardens, 
and modernizing them in a miserable taste; transforming the rich draperies 
which Brown had thrown around Nature, into a harlequin jacket of little 
clumps and beds. A large portion of the old pleasure-ground is thus de- 
stroyed ; as the old gardener, almost with tears in his eyes, remarked to us. 
Many noble trees lay felled around ; and a black spot on the turf showed the 
place where a laurel, nearly as large as the one I mentioned, lately stood in 
all its pride and beauty. I thought with grief how vain it is to attempt to 
found anything lasting, and saw in imagination those of my successors who 
will destroy the plantations which we have designed and tended together with 
so much fondness. Blenheim is chiefly situated on the spot where stood 
the ancient royal park of Woodstock (which you remember from Walter 
Scott's last novel). A great part of the oak wood which existed in the 
time of the unhappy Rosamond is still alive, and dying in an agony of a 
century's duration. There are perfect monsters of oaks and cedars, both as 
to form and size. Many are so entirely enwreathed with ivy that it has 
killed them, but at the same time clothed them with a new and more beau- 
tiful evergreen foliage which enwraps the decayed trunk, like a magnificent 
shroud, till it falls into dust. 

Deer, pheasants and cattle, people the park, whose green plains seemed, 
in the uncertain mist, boundless as the sea ; in some places, bare as a Steppe, 
in others thickly planted. 

The interior of the house looks rather neglected, but contains a number 
of valuable works of art. It must be confessed that never did a nation bestow 
a richer reward on one of its great men than Blenheim, which is princely 
even in its minutest details.* 

As we entered, there was such a smoke that we thought we had to en- 
counter a second fog in the house. Some very dirty shabby servants — a 
thing almost unheard-of here — ran past us to fetch the ' Chatelaine,' who, 
wrapped in a Scotch plaid, with a staff* in her hand and the air of an en- 
chantress, advanced with so majestic an air towards us, that one might have 
taken her for the Duchess herself. The magic wand was for the purpose 
of pointing more conveniently to the various curiosities. As a preliminary 
measure, she required that we should inscribe our names in a large book : 
unhappily, however, there' was no ink in the inkstand, so that this import- 
ant ceremony was necessarily dispensed with. We passed through many 
chill and faded rooms, decorated with numerous and fine pictures, though 
among them are many inferior ones, on which the names of Raphael, Guido, 
&c. are liberally bestowed. The gallery is extremely rich in fine and ge- 
nuine Rubens'; the most attractive among which, to me, was his own fre- 
quently repeated but excellent portrait. I was also much interested by a 
whole length portrait of the wild Duke of Buckingham, by Van Dyk, — a 
roue of a very different sort, both in the delicate turn of the features, the 
chivalrous dignity, and the tasteful dress, from our modern ones. Further 
on is a beautiful Madonna, by Carlo Dolce, less smooth and 'banale' than 
most of those by the same master ; and an excellent and most characteristic 
portrait of Catharine of Medicis. She is very fair, with exquisitely beauti- 
ful hands, and a singular expression of cold passion (if I may use the words) 
in her features, which yet does not excite the feeling of repulsion one would 
anticipate. ' Ruben's wife hangs opposite to her, — a handsome Flemish 

* The description is abridged. It. is feared the English reader has already been 
sated with parks and houses. — Thansl. 



■ 
■ 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 87 

housewife, somewhat vulgar, but beautifully painted and admirably con- 
ceived. Philip the Second, by Titian, appeared to me unmeaning : — two 
beggar boys, by Morillo, admirable. Lot and his daughters, by Rubens ; — 
the female figures somewhat less vulgar and coarse than most of his beau- 
ties, who generally have too much in common with the chief produce of his 
native country: Lot is admirably painted: the picture is however a very 
unpleasing one. In the bedroom was hung, oddly enough, a disgusting, 
fearful picture of Seneca's death in the bath, — Seneca already a livid corpse. 

The portrait of the Duke's mother, by Sir Joshua Reynolds is extremely 
pleasing. Her beauty and sweet child-like look were worthy of a Madon- 
na ; and the little boy is a perfect Cupid, full of archness and grace. 

The library is a magnificent room, containing seventeen thousand vol- 
umes, decorated on the one side with a marble statue of Queen Anne ; on 
the other, a strange pendant— a colossal antique bust of Alexander ; a model 
of youthful beauty, in my opinion excelling the Apollo Belvedere. It is 
more human, and yet the god-like nature appears through the human, — not 
indeed in the christian, but the pagan sense of the word. 

It is but fair to notice the portrait of the great Duke of Marlborough, to 
whom this whole splendid edifice owes its existence. His history is re- 
markable in many points of view : I especially advise every man who wishes 
to make his fortune to study it attentively ; he may learn much from a char- 
acter so formed to get on in the world. — The following anecdote has always 
appeared to me remarkable, insignificant as was the incident. 

The Duke was one day overtaken by a violent shower of rain while 
riding with his suite. He asked his groom for his cloak ; and not receiv- 
ing it at the instant, repeated his order in a rather hasty tone. This pro- 
voked tbx,man, and he replied with an impertinent air, " Well, I hope you 
will waft just till I have unbuckled it." The Duke, without evincing the 
slightest irritation, turned smiling to the person next him, and said, " Now 
would I not for all the world be of that fellow's temper." 

The more well-known story of the ' petulance' 'of the Duchess of Cas- 
tlemaine, which Churchill turned to such good account, and which in the 
strangest way laid the basis of his great career, showed an entirely similar 
' disposition,' and power over himself. 

In night and fog we reached Oxford, where I alighted at the Star, and 
refreshed myself with an admirable dinner prepared by a French cook from 
London. Though I do not, like the ancients, regard cooks as objects of 
religious veneration, I cannot deny that I have singular respect for their art : 
'II est beau au feu' may be said with as much justice of a virtuoso of this 
kind, as of the most dashing soldier ; and in the field of politics and diplo- 
macy, every minister knows how much he is indebted to his cook. 

My excursion draws to a close, and in three days I hope to send off B 

with all the materials he has collected, like a bee laden with honey. 

January 8th. 

Oxford is a most singular city. Such a crowd of magnificent Gothic 
buildings, from five hundred to a thousand years old, can nowhere else be 
found collected in one place. There are spots in which you can imagine 
yourself transported back to the fifteenth century. You see nothing around 
you but monuments of that period, without a single incongruous object. 
Many, nay almost all, of these old colleges and churches are also very beau- 
tiful in detail, and all of a most picturesque character. I have often won- 
dered why we do not adopt many of the details of this style of architecture ; 



S8 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

for instance, the broad light windows in two or three divisions, sometimes 
diversified with large bows and irregularly divided; only habit could make 
us endure the uniform rows of square holes which we call windows. 

I went first to the so-called Theatre, which was built by a bishop three 
hundred years ago. The iron railing which surrounds it has, instead of 
pillars, a sort of ' termini' with the heads of the Roman Emperors, a strange 
fancy, but the effect is not bad. In this theatre — which, as might be ex- 
pected from its origin, is more like a church — the Emperor of Russia, the 
King of Prussia, and the Prince Regent were made Doctors, and were 
obliged to appear in scarlet robes. The portraits of all three have since 
been placed here. The King of England in his coronation robes — an ad- 
mirable picture by Lawrence, worthy of ancient times — hangs in the cen- 
tre, in a most splendid frame ; on either side, in far simpler frames and 
simpler garb, hang the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia, also 
by Lawrence. The King is not like : of the Emperor Alexander I never 
saw a better portrait. 

At the University Stereotype Press, where the printing of a sheet on 
both sides is accomplished in five minutes, I again displayed my activity, 
and had the honour to print a sheet, which I send you as companion to the 
Birmingham button : it contains some interesting incidents concerning the 
Maccabees. 

A great deal of the printing for the Bible Society is done here ; and if it 
goes on at this rate, the time will soon arrive concerning which a periodical 
called ' The Catholic,' of the year 1824, prophesied in this wise : " If it 
comes to that, that all read the Bible, the world will be a fit abode only for 
wild beasts." If " the Catholic" means that all will understand it, he may 
be right, for then the whole human race will be ripe for another^ world. 
Nevertheless I am so far of " the Catholic's" mind, that I think the indis- 
criminate diffusion of the Bible among all, — even the rudest savages, — is 
throwing pearls before swine. 

I next went to the Museum, which contains a very heterogeneous mix- 
ture of things. On the staircase as you enter is a picture of the battle of 
Pavia, in which the principal figures are portraits painted at the time, as is 
expressed on the canvass. It is precisely in the style of the old miniatures, 
and very interesting for the accuracy of the dresses and armour: under it 
is the inscription " Comen les gens de Lempereur deffirent les francoys en 
Ian 1525." Portraits of Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Richelieu also adorn 
the staircase. Under them was that of Tradescant, a noted gardener of 

Charles the First, from which it was impossible to tear his colleague R 

away ; he looked at the picture with a sort of protecting air, and was spe- 
cially delighted with a garland of mulberries and cucumbers which pictur- 
esquely surrounded this father of gardeners. The most interesting thing 
in the picture, to me, was the portrait of a strange large bird; worthy of 
the Arabian Nights, called Dodo, which belonged to the gardener when 
alive, and whose like has never been seen in these parts since. As a proof 
that this is no fable, they showed us the genuine head and beak — wonder- 
fully odd. 

In the collection of natural history were a great many rare parrots, and 
a curious bird with spikes on its wings, with which it spears fish as with a 
lance. The diminutive warrior, who is only six inches high, looks uncom- 
monly fierce and bold ; he is like a miniature crane, only much more cun- 
ning and pugnacious. Here is the duck-billed platypus, that strange ani- 
mal from New Holland. The productions of that part of the globe are so 



« . 

IRELAND AND PRANCE. * S9 

unlike those of all the others, that they almost make one imagine it belongs 
to another era of creation, or that it dropped on our earth from some wan- 
dering star. 

The colours of a picture made of humming-bird's feathers seemed some- 
thing unearthly. Equally curious was a bas-relief of a knight in splendid 
gold-green armour made of beetles' wings. Our modern knights might be 
very handsomely represented in steel-blue armour made from the wings of 
the dung-beetle. I cannot attempt to give you an inventory of the cabinet 
of curiosities ; I confined myself, as I always do, to what struck me, which 
was not always the most celebrated ; — a jewelled glove of Henry the Eighth's ; 
— an autograph letter of Queen Elizabeth's to Lord Burleigh, beautifully 
written; — a pretty riding-cloak and shoe of the Maiden Queen, which latter 
proves the extreme beauty of her foot ; lastly, her watch, with a tasteful 
chain consisting of five medallions in a row, each containing hair of a dif- 
ferent colour — probably of her chief favourites. Far more curious and sa- 
cred is a medallion with a portrait rudely executed in mosaic, and an inscrip- 
tion signifying that it belonged to the great Alfred. This precious relic was 
found ten years ago in ploughing a field in the island of Athelney, where 
Alfred lay hidden from the Danes. 

I must now conduct you to the picture-gallery built by Elizabeth, and 
preserved exactly ' in statu quo.' The roof is of wainscot panelled, and 
in each panel a coat-of-arms, which has a most antique and magnificent ef- 
fect. Very good models of the principal temples of antiquity stand in the 
ante-room. There are some excellent pictures. The one which charmed 
me the most was an authentic portrait of Mary of Scotland, by Zuccaro, 
painted just after her arrival from France, and brilliant in all the indescriba- 
ble radiance and fascination of her youth and freshness. It is easy to un- 
derstand how it was that this woman had only passionate adorers and de- 
voted partisans, or furious enemies. A face more, in the true sense of the 
word, charming, — seductive, — can scarcely be imagined : with all its 
French graces, it however betrays the selfishness of the beauty, the reck- 
lessness of unbridled passion ; but of malignity or vulgarity, such as we 
see, the former in Elizabeth, the latter in Catharine of Medicis, not a trace ; 
— in short, a perfectly womanlike, and therefore perfectly captivating cha- 
racter of countenance, with all the virtues and all the weaknesses and vices 
of her sex in their fullest proportions. I should think the possession of 
such a picture a real happiness, — that of the original might give one too 
much trouble. The same artist painted a portrait of Elizabeth, precisely 
like that at Warwick. The Earl of Leicester, taken shortly before his death, 
is extremely interesting. His face is as elegant and high-bred as it is hand- 
some ; and though not indicative of genius, has the expression of a saga- 
cious, dignified, and powerful man. There are no remains of the brilliancy 
of youth, but a proud complaoent consciousness of secure unalterable favour. 
In a copy of the School of Athens by Giulio Romano, I admired once more 
the exquisite face of the young duke of Urbino, — that ideal of soft youthful 
beauty : — the loveliest girl might be more than satisfied with the possession 
of it. Garrick's portrait, by Raphael Mengs, did not answer my idea of 
that great actor so perfectly as the one at Stratford-on-Avon. I was de- 
lighted with a picture of Charles the Twelfth, by Schroter, — every inch a 
grand Don Quixotte : and with a very characteristic Charles the Second, 
by Sir Peter Lely. Charles' aspect, like his age, seems to me entirely 
French, even to his features, which are strikingly like tPDse of Bussy Ra- 
butin. His father hangs near, — a more attractive picture than usual. He 

12 



90 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

has unquestionably a fine face, with very speaking eyes ; but the soft, me- 
lancholy, ideological expression too plainly shows that the bearer of such 
features was little fitted to encounter such a man as Cromwell, or such an 
age as that he lived in. It is the greatest calamity for a prince to fall upon 
an ill-suited time, unless he be strong enough to impress his own stamp 
upon it. The great Locke, by Gibson, is a pale attenuated student. Near 
him is a handsome portly Luther, by Holbein;- — the stately Handel, by 
Hodson ; — and Hugo Grotius, with his acute, crafty, and yet high chival- 
rous face, more that of an energetic man of the world than of a man of let- 
ters. These are the subjects that struck me the most. 

January 9th. 

To-day I have walked all over Oxford ; and I cannot express with what 
intense delight I wandered from cloister to cloister, and refreshed myself at 
this living spring of antiquity. 

There is a magnificent avenue of elms, which like the buildings around it, 
dates from the year 1520. From this queen of avenues, in which not a 
single tree is wanting, and which leads through a meadow to the river, you 
see on one side a charming landscape, on the other a part of the city, with 
five or six of the most beautiful Gothic towers, — ever a noble view, but to- 
day rendered almost like a picture of iairy enchantment : the sky was over- 
east, the wind drove the black fantastic clouds, like a herd of wild beasts, 
across it; at length the most beautiful rainbow, vaulting from one tower and 
descending on another, spanned the whole city. 

From this ancient seat of the Muses of England, from all its colleges, — 
each different from the other, — each enclosing a spacious court, and adorned 
with noble towers, — each with its own more or less beautifully ornamented 
church, its library and picture-gallery, all in their kind of new and varied 
interest, — I carry away the most agreeable recollections. If you can bear 
to drink again and again from the old cup, you shall accompany me in my 
rambles. 

My first walk was to the Ratcliffe Library; a round and modern building, 
—erected, that is, in the last century, at Dr. Ratcliffe's cost, — nearly in the 
centre of the town. The interior is simply a rotunda in three stages or 
stories, with a cupola and two open galleries, whence side-rooms radiate 
from the inner, to the outer circles. Below are casts of the best antiques. 
A small winding staircase leads to a side tower, from the roof of which you 
have a splendid view of the Gothic palaces pointing to heaven with their 
hundred spires. The surrounding country is cheerful, fertile, and well wood- 
ed. There are four-and-twenty colleges (a sort of cloister for education,) and 
thirteen churches in this small town, containing only sixteen thousand inha- 
bitants. 

From hence we proceeded to Henry the Eighth's Library, preserved, ex- 
ternally and internally, in nearly its original state, and containing not less 
than three hundred thousand volumes. The 'locale' is like no other of the 
kind, and transports one completely into past ages. The cruciform room; 
the strange shelves ; the iron gratings, half blue, half gilded, and of a form 
no longer seen; the enormous windows, as broad as three church windows 
together and ornamented with beautiful coloured glass ; the gay gilded ceil- 
ing, with numberless panels, each containing the picture of an open Bible 
with four crowns ; even the Doctors sitting at the tables in the dress of Luther, 
which they still wear, — how strangely is the fancy excited by such a scene ! 
A gallery runs round midway of the high shelves, for the purpose of reach- 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 91 

ing the books above. On the railing of this gallery are hung the portraits of 
the various librarians, from the first to the last; some, unhappily, in modern 
dresses, who look like apes among their venerable predecessors. In the 
middle of the room the shelves are so arranged on either side, that they form 
a long alley of enclosed closets, in which every man who wishes to use the 
library can work completely m/disturbed, — an old and most exemplary ar- 
rangement. There are also books in the rooms which occupy the whole 
ground-rioor of this quadrangular edifice. Here are some very curious manu- 
scripts and specimens of early printing. I saw with sorrow how large a 
tribute the poverty of Germany has been compelled to pay to the wealth of 
England; among other tilings, a magnificent copy of Faust's first Bible, of 
the year 1440, which I think belonged to our Doctor Barth, and is inscribed 
with a number of notes in his handwriting. I was delighted to find a manu- 
script so exactly like a volume of Froissart in our library, (that with the 
miniatures in every leaf,) embellished with the same arabesques of fruit and' 
flowers on a gold ground, the style and colouring of the figures so precisely 
the same, that it is scarcely to be doubted they are by the same painter. 
Unfortunately there is neither name nor date. The text is Quintus Curtius, 
—all the figures exactly in the costume of the time of the illuminator: 
Alexander, cased in iron from head to foot, breaks a lance with Darius, and 
throws him from his saddle, just in the style of the French and English 
knights in Froissart. 

A very curious French manuscript, the subject of which is an heroic poem, 
contains the name of the writer with the date 1340, (an extremely rare oc- 
currence,) and under it the name of the painter with the date 1346 ; this gives 
reason to conclude that the latter had spent six years in the illuminating, 
which is almost all executed on a very unusual design, in gold, blue and red 
in squares, like a carpet. This manuscript is peculiarly interesting from 
the circumstance that the painter, instead of enclosing the text within a bor- 
der or arabesque, has surrounded it with a representation of the trades, sports, 
and pastimes of his time. A cursory glance showed me, together with many 
games and occupations which we have lost, so many which are still so pre- 
cisely the same, that I was really surprised. For instance, a masked-ball ; 
Kamfhtrchtn vermiethen;* the Handespiel, or ' gioco di villano ;' the same 
with the feet, which we boys often used to play in winter to warm ourselves ; 
throwing at cocks, and cockfighting; rope-dancers and conjurors ; horse-riders 
and trained horses, whose feats are more wonderful than ours ; rifle-shooting 
at a man who (' mille pardons') turns himself in unseemly wise to the com- 
pany, like one still existing on a gate at Lausitz ; a smithy, where a horse 
is shoeing ; a wagon, with three large cart-horses harnessed out at length, 
with harness, &c. all in the present form, even the driver's costume, — a blue 
slop — the very same ; and many other things which I have not time to no- 
tice, — showed that though many things change, yet an infinite deal remains 
unaltered, and perhaps, ' a tout prendre,' human life is more the same in dif- 
ferent ages than we generally imagine. 

A Boccacio, with exquisitely beautiful miniatures, is one of the show- 
pieces of the library. A copy of the Acts of the Apostles, of the seventh 
century, in Greek and Latin, is shown as a great curiosity : each line con- 
tains only one word in each language. Considering its great antiquity, it 
is in very good preservation. 

In the beautiful court of All Souls College — which moreover is carpeted 

* Literally, ' Little rooms to let;' I think we call the game, ' Seats.' — Tbansi., 



92 LETTERS ON ENftT.ANP, 

with the finest turf — there is a spot whence you have a most magnificent 
view of spires, towers, and facades of ancient buildings, rising in unbroken 
series, one bebind another, without the least mixture of modern houses. 
Here is another noble library. In the middle is an orrery, which illustrates 
our solar svstem very clearly, and keeps equal course with the sun and 
planets through the year. 

Christ's College is a beautiful building of modern times ; a part of it only 
is very old. The church is of Saxon architecture ; round and pointed 
arches intermingle, but do not at all offend the eye. Here is the famous 
shrine of St. Frisdewilde, a most magnificent and tasteful Gothic monument 
of the beginning of the eighth century, and still in good preservation. It 
was enriched with silver Apostles and other ornaments, which were plun- 
dered in Cromwell's time. That unhappy religious war did irreparable 
damage to the antiquities of England ; till then, all these sacred relics were 
in perfect preservation. 

Attached to this college is that most charming walk I described to you 
above. It leads us to Magdalen College, which has been in part newly re- 
stored. The restoration is perfectly in the ancient style, and renders this 
part of the building secure for five hundred years to come ; it has already 
cost forty thousand pounds, though but a small part is completed : — it may 
be imagined what enormous sums the execution of such works from the 
foundation would cost. Nothing great in art can be executed now, for the 
money it would cost is absolutely unattainable. The sum which formerly 
purchased a god-like work of Raphael's, would now (even allowing for the 
difference in the value of money) scarcely buy a moderate portrait by Law- 
rence. The Botanic Garden, which closed our walk, contains nothing worth 
describing. I therefore release you for the present, my dear Julia ; ' mais 
e'est a y revenir demain.' 

Buckingham, Jan. \0th. 

It is a sin how long my private journal has been neglected. The more 
my letters to you swell, the more does my unhappy journal shrink. If you 
were to burn these letters, I should have no trace of what had become of 
me all this time. Imagine how unpleasant to vanish from one's own me- 
mory ! 

My imagination is so ' montee' by the many vestiges and echoes of past 
times, that I dream of a distant future, in which even ruins will be no 
niore , — in which we shall lose not only these shadows of humanity, but hu- 
man nature itself, and begin a new life in new spheres. For in remem- 
brance, say what you will, we entirely lose that which we actually were ; — 
even here, the old man nearly loses himself as a child. We may indeed 
find ourselves again, my best friend, and then will the tie that binds us ne- 
cessarily re-unite. Let this satisfy us. 

' Mais revenons a nos moutons ; — e'est a dire, parlons de nouveau de 
pares.' 

Dreadful weather — rain and darkness, detained me at Oxford till three in 
the afternoon, when it cleared sufficiently for me to set out. The postilion 
missed the road, which is not a main one, and drove us a long way about, 
so that we arrived very late. While the fire was lighting in my room, I sat 
down in mine host's, where I found a very pretty girl, his niece, and two 
doctors of the place, with whom I talked away the evening very pleasantly. 

jlylesbury, Jan. llth. 

Stowe is, like Blenheim, another specimen of English grandeur and mag- 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 93 

nificence. The park embraces a large tract of undulating ground, with fine 
trees ; the house is a noble building in the Italian style. The grounds were 
laid out long ago ; and though in many respects beautiful, and remarkable 
for fine lofty trees, are so overloaded with temples and buildings of all sorts, 
that the greatest possible improvement to the place would be the pulling 
down ten or a dozen of them. There is a charming flower-garden, thickly 
surrounded with high trees, firs, cedars and evergreens, and flowering shrubs. 
The parterre forms a regular pattern like a carpet, in front of a crescent- 
formed house filled with rare birds. In the middle of this carpet is a foun- 
tain, and on either side are two pretty 'volieres' of wire. 

In the park stands a tower called the Bourbon Tower, from the circle of 
limes around it which Louis the Eighteenth planted during his long residence 
at Hartwell in this neighbourhood. The tower, though modern, is half fallen 
in. 1 wish this be no ill omen for the Bourbons in France, where even the 
sage Charter-giver could obtain no better titles from his subjects than ' Louis 
l'lnevitable,' and ' Deux Fois Neuf.' 

Here is a monument deserving of mention, dedicated to the great men and 
women of England, with very appropriate inscriptions, and busts modelled 
after the best pictures. 

The facade of the building is four hundred and fifty feet long, and as long- 
is the unbroken ' enfilade' of rooms in the 'bel etage,' which you enter from 
the garden by a fine flight of steps. You pass through a bronze door into 
an oval marble hall with a beautiful dome, whence alone it is lighted. A 
circle of twenty pillars of red scagliola marble surrounds it, and in the niches 
between them are ten antique statues. The floor is paved with real marble, 
and a gilded grating admits heated air. I will not weary you with further 
description of the rooms ; — they are very rich, and all more or less deco- 
rated with pictures and curiosities. The stale bed-room, which is not used, 
is crowded with fine porcelain, and contains a curious old bed of embroi- 
dered velvet with gold fringe. 

In a boudoir near were many other curiosities, which we were only per- 
mitted to see through a grating. The loss of a ruby necklace formerly be- 
longing to Marie Antoinette, is the very sufficient reason for this prohibi- 
tion, which is never removed but in the Duke's presence. 

The library is a long gallery covered from top to bottom with shelves, 
with a light and elegant gallery in the middle. An adjoining room, fitted 
up in the same way, contains nothing but maps and engravings, probably 
one of the richest collections in the world. This seems the peculiar taste 
of the present Duke. 

The hall on the other side of the house, looking on the park, commands 
a view which struck me as quite peculiar. You see a large open grassy 
plain, skirted on either side by an oak wood, and in the middle and back 
ground meadows and wood interspersed. In the centre of the plain, about 
sixty or seventy paces from the house, stands, perfectly isolated, a colossal 
snow-white equestrian statue, of admirable workmanship. The pedestal is 
so high that the horseman seems to rest on the top of the wood behind him. 
Not a building, nor any other object than trees, grass, and sky, are visible ; 
and the whole scene so utterly still and inanimate, that the white spectral 
image rivets the attention : — no finer decoration for Don Juan could be 
imagined. It happened, too, by a fortunate chance, that the sky on that 
side of the house was perfectly black with a threatening snow-storm, so that 
the dazzling white statue stood out in almost fearful grandeur. At the mo- 
ment, it looked alive, and every muscle seemed to rise in the sharp lights. 



94 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Among the pictures is a treasure which seems to be unknown to our Ger- 
man travellers, at least I never saw it noticed : — a genuine portrait of Shak- 
speare, painted during his lifetime by Barnage. The hypercrities of Eng- 
land will have it there is no genuine portrait of Shakspeare ; but it seems to 
me almost impossible to invent a physiognomy carrying on it such a tri- 
umphant air of truth, so fully expressing the grandeur and originality of the 
man ; furnished with all the intellectual elevation, all the acuteness, wit, 
delicacy, all the genuine humour, whose exhaustless treasures were never 
so lavished on any mortal. The countenance is nowise what is vulgarly 
called handsome; but the sublime beauty of the mind within beams from 
every part. Across the lofty forehead gleam the bright flashes of that dar- 
ing spirit ; the large dark brown eyes are penetrating, liery, yet mild ; around 
the lips play light irony and good-natured archness, but wedded to a sweet 
benevolent smile, which lends the highest, the most heart-winning charm to 
the lofty, awful dignity of the intellectual parts of the face. Wondrously 
perfect appears the structure of the skull and forehead; there are no single 
prominences, but all the organs so capacious and complete that we stand 
astonished before such a glorious pattern of perfect organization, and feel a 
deep joy at finding the man in so beautiful a harmony with his works. 

Two excellent Alhrecht Durers — a pair of female saints in a fantastic 
landscape — attracted me, particularly by their primitive German character. 
They are two genuine Niirnberg housewives, dressed in their fatherland ish 
caps, and taken from nature itself; good-natured, and busied about their 
saintly affairs.. — A picture of huther, by Holbein, is more intellectual and 
less fat than usual. 

There is a remarkable picture, by Van Dyk, of the Duke of Vieuxville, 
ambassador from the Court of France to Charles the First, who with chi- 
valrous devotion followed the King into the field and was killed at Newbury. 
The dress is old, but picturesque; — a white ' juste-au-corps, a la Henri 
Quatre,' with a black mantle thrown over it; full short black breeches fall- 
ing over the knee, with silver points ; pale violet stockings with gold clocks, 
and white shoes with gold roses. On the mantle is embroidered the star of. 
the Holy Ghost, four times as large as it is now worn, the blue riband ' en 
sautoir,' but hanging down very low, and the cross worn in the present 
fashion, on the side ; it is narrower and smaller than now, and hangs by the 
broad riband almost under the arm. 

The Duke de Guise was not such as I had pictured him to myself: — a 
pale face with reddish beard and hair; with the expression rather of an 'in- 
triguant' than of a great man. — A picture which corresponds better with the 
character of the person it represents is Count Gondemar, Spanish ambassa- 
dor to the Court of James the First, by Velasquez ; he ingratiated himself 
with the King by his dog-Latin, in which burlesque form he made free to 
say anything. He brought the gallant Sir Walter Raleigh to the scaffold 
by his Jesuitical intrigues. 

A picture of Cromwell, by his Court painter Richardson, has a double 
interest for the family, It was painted expressly for one of the Duke's an- 
cestor's, who appears in the same picture as page, in the act of tying the 
Protector's scarf. This portrait is not much like the others of the same 
personage I have seen ; it represents him as younger, and of a more refined 
nature, and is therefore probably flattered. From the hand of a Court painter 
this is to be expected. 

I must only mention two fine and large Teniers', one of which represents 
three wonderfully characteristic Dutch boors, meeting in a village and gos- 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 95 

sipin'g with their pipes in their mouths ; an excellent Ruysdael ; six famous 
Rembrandt's, and Titian's lovely mistress. I admired, too, a new specimen 
of art, — two Sevres cups witli miniatures after Petitot, by that admirable 
porcelain-paintpr Madame Janquotot. The one represents Ninon de l'En- 
clos, of whom I had never befure seen a picture that answered to my idea 
of her. This expressed her character fully, and is of the most attractive 
beauty, — genuine French, lively as quicksilver, bold almost to impudence, 
but too generous and too truly natural to leave any other than an engaging 
impression on the mind. The other — a gentle, placid, and voluptuous 
beauty- — was inscribed, Francoise d'Orleans de Valois. As thoroughly ini- 
tiated in French genealogies and memoirs, you will know who she is. ' Je 
l'ignore.' Each cup cost a thousand francs. 

In a beautiful moonlight we drove to Aylesbury, whence I now write. 

Uxbridge, Jan. 12th. 

This evening I hope to be in London again. While the horses are put- 
ling-to I write a few words. We saw Lord Carrington's park this morn- 
ing, — for your comfort be it said, the last, at present atleast. The garden 
is nothing remarkable : the house is in the beloved modern Gothic style, 
but, being simple and unpretending, looks less affected. It is built of stone, 
without ornament. A good portrait of Pitt hangs in the library. This great 
man has anything but the face of a man of genius, — and who knows whether 
posterity will think his deeds betray more than his face ? 

One thing pretty I observed in the garden, — a thick massy wreath of ivy 
planted on the turf. It looks as if negligently dropped there. Our excur- 
sion was to be closed by the sight of Bulstrode, which Repton describes at 
such length as the model of parks ; but this drop is spared you, my poor 
Julia, for the Duke of Portland has sold it, and the present owner has felled 
the trees about which Repton is so enthusiastic, ploughed up the park, and 
pulled down the house to sell the stone. It was a miserable scene of de- 
solation, — made more miserable by the strange dress of the women at work ; 
they were wrapped from top to toe in blood-red cloaks, and looked like an 
ill-omened assemblage of executioners. 

London, Jan. 13th. 

By bright gas-light, which is always like a festal illumination here, we 
drove into town, and as I wished to have an instant contrast with my park- 
and-garden life, I alighted at Covent Garden to see my first Christmas pan- 
tomime. This is a very favourite spectacle in England, particularly with 
children ; so that I was quite in my place. Playwrights and scene-painters 
take great pains to make every year's wonders exceed the last. Before I 
bid you good-night I must give you a rhapsodical sketch of the performance. 
At the rising of the curtain a thick mist covers the stage and gradually rolls 
off. This is remarkably well managed by means of fine gauze. In the dim 
light you distinguish a little cottage, the dwelling of a sorceress ; in the 
back-ground a lake surrounded by mountains, some of whose peaks are 
clothed with snow. All as yet is.misty and indistinct; — the sun then rises 
triumphantly, chases the morning dews, and the hut, with the village in the 
distance, now appear in perfect outline. And now you behold upon the 
roof a large cock, who flaps his wings, plumes himself, stretches his neck, 
and greets the sun with several very natural Kikerikys.* A magpie near 
him begins to chatter and to strut about, and to peck at a gigantic tom-cat 
* German for 'Cock-a-doodle-doo.'— Transl. 



96 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

lying in a niche in the wall, who sleepily stretches himself, cleans his face, 
and purrs most complacently. This tom-cat is acted with great ' virtuosity* 
by an actor who is afterwards transformed into Harlequin. The way in 
which he plays with a melon, the lightness and agility with which he climbs 
up the chimney and down again, his springs, and all his gesture, are so na- 
tural that they could only be acquired by a long study of the animal himself. 
Happily the scenic art is come to that, that it no longer suffers men to be 
excelled by poodles and monkeys, but has actually raised them to the power 
of representing those admired animals to the life. 

Meanwhile the door opens, and Mother Shipton, a frightful old witch, 
enters with a son very like herself. The household animals, to whom is 
added an enormous duck, pay their morning court to the best of their abili- 
ty. But the witch is in a bad humour, utters a curse upon them all, and 
changes them on the spot into the persons of the Italian comedy, who, like 
the rest of the world, persecute each other without rest, till at last the most 
cunning conquers. The web of story is then spun on through a thousand 
transformations and extravagances, without any particular connexion, but 
with occasional good hits at the incidents of the day ; and above all, with 
admirable decorations, and great wit on the part of the machinist. One of 
the best scenes was the witch's kitchen. A rock cleaves open and displays 
a large cave, in the midst of which more than a cart-load of wood forms the 
fire, before which a whole stag with its antlers, a whole ox, and a pig, are 
turning rapidly on the spit. On a hearth on the right side is baking a pie 
as big as a wagon, and on the left a plum-pudding of equal calibre is boiling. 
The ' chef de cuisine' appears with a dozen or two assistants in a grotesque 
white uniform, with long tails, and each armed with a gigantic knife and 
fork. The commandant makes them go through a ludicrous exercise, pre- 
sent arms, &c. He then draws them up ' en peloton' to baste the roast, 
which is performed with ladles of the same huge proportions as the other 
utensils, while they industriously fan the fire with their tails. 

The scene next represents a high castle, to which the colossal 'batterie 
de cuisine' is conveyed like a park of artillery. It appears smaller and 
smaller along the winding path, till at length the pie disappears in the hori- 
zon like the setting moon. 

Next we are transported into a large town, with all sorts of comical in- 
scriptions on the houses, most of them satires on the multitude of new in- 
ventions and companies for all manner of undertakings ; such as, " Washing 
Company of the three united kingdoms ;" " Steam-boat to America in six 
days ;" " Certain way of winning in the lottery ;" " Mining shares at ten 
pounds a share, by which to become worth a million in ten years." The 
fore-ground exhibits a tailor's workshop, with several journeymen busily 
stitching away in the ' rez de chaussee ; a pair of shears six yards long are 
fixed over the door as a sign, with the points upwards. Harlequin arrives, 
pursued by Pantaloon and Co., and springs through the air with a somerset 
in at a window on the first story, which breaks with a loud crash. The 
pursuers drawing back from the ' salto mortale,' tumble over and thump 
each other with artist-like skill and wonderful suppleness. Ladders are now 
brought, and they climb into the house after Harlequin : but he has made 
his escape through the chimney, and runs off over the roofs. Pantaloon 
with his long chin and beard leans out of the window before which the 
shears are placed, to see which way Harlequin is gone. Suddenly the part- 
ed blades shut to, and his head falls into the street. Pantaloon, not a whit 
the less, runs down stairs and rushes out at the door after his rolling head ; 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 97 

— unluckily a poodle picks it up and runs off with it, and Pantaloon after 
him. But here he meets Harlequin again, disguised as a doctor, who holds 
a consultation with three others as to what is to be done for the unhappy- 
Pantaloon. They at length decide to rub the place where the head is want- 
ing with Macassar oil ; and by means of this operation a new head happily 
grows under the eye of the spectators. 

In the last act, Tivoli at Paris is well given. A balloon ascends with a 
pretty child. While he floats from the stage over the heads of the audi- 
ence the earthly scene gradually sinks, and as the balloon reaches the lofty 
roof, where it makes a circuit round the chandelier, the stage is filled with 
rolling clouds through which a thousand stars shine and produce a very 
pretty illusion. 

As the balloon sinks, town and gardens gi-atlually rise again. A rope is 
next stretched, on which a lady drives a wheelbarrow to the summit of a 
Gothic tower, in the midst of fire-works ; while other ' equilibristes' per- 
form their break-neck feats on level ground. 

At the conclusion, the stage is transformed, amid thunder and lightning, 
into a magnificent Chinese hall with a thousand gay paper lanterns ; where 
all spells are dissolved, the witch banished to the centre of the earth by a 
beneficent enchanter, and Harlequin, recognized as legitimate prince, mar- 
ries his Columbine. 

On our way home we had another and more terrible spectacle, gratis. 
A lofty column of lurid smoke poured from a chimney, and soon became 
tinged with blue, red and green ; — the nearer we came the thicker and more 
variegated it ascended, like one of the Chinese fireworks we had just seen. 

" Probably," said I to R , " a chemical laboratory, if it be not indeed a 

fire in earnest." Hardly had I said the words when my fears were fulfilled. 
Cries resounded from all sides, the flames streamed wildly forth towards 
heaven, the people flocked together, and fire-engines soon rattled through 
the streets. But the huge city swallows up all particular incidents, — five 
hundred steps further, and the fire in the neighbourhood exeited no interest 
whatever ; the guests in an illumined mansion danced merrily, the play- 
goers walked quietly home, and all traces of alarm or sympathy were lost. 

But, my dear Julia, ' il faut que tout finesse' — and so must my long nar- 
rative, which certainly furnishes you with a sheet for every year of my life. 
That it ends with fire you must take as an emblem of ardent love, — and 
here it is not necessary, as your superstition requires, to exclaim " In a 
good hour be it said." Every hour, even the most unfortunate, is good — 
where love is. 

Your L . 



LETTER XI. 

London, Jan. 19th, 1827. 
Dearest Julia, 

R left London to-day for Harwich, and will be with you in a fort- 
night. I know how glad you will be to have a living witness of the sayings 

and doings of your L ; one whom you can question about so many 

things which, even with the best intentions cannot always find place in 
letters. 

I have now settled myself into a town life again. Yesterday I dined 

13 



98 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

with Prince E , where the secretary of legation kept us in an in- 
cessant laugh. He is a kind of agreeahle buffoon, and although of very 
mean extraction, a superlative ultra ; (' tel le maitre, tel le valet.') I have 
often admired the talent of the French, and envied it too, for making the 
most amusing stories out of the most common-place incidents ; — such as lose 
all their salt coming from any mouth but theirs. 

Nobody possesses this talent in a higher degree than Monsieur R . 

He affords another proof that it is entirely the result of a language so ad- 
mirably adapted to produce it, and of an education which springs from the 

same source; for Monsieur R is a German — I think a Svvabian; but 

was brought to France when only two years old, and educated as a French- 
man. Language makes the man, more than blood; — though 'tis true, blood 
has first made the language. 

' Au reste,' one must acknowledge that however brilliant such agreeable 
chatter may be at the moment, it goes out like a fusee, and leaves nothing 
on the memory ; so that the pedantic German feels a sort of uneasiness 
after listening to it, and regrets having spent his time so unprofitably. Had 
it been possible to that element of Germanism which formed our language, 
to give it that lightness, roundness, agreeable equivocalness, and at the same 
time precision and definiteness, — qualities which are called into full play 
in society by French audacity, — the conversation of the German would cer- 
tainly have been the more satisfactory of the two, for he would never have 
neglected to connect the useful with the agreeable. As it is, we Germans 
'have nothing left in society, but that sort of talent which the French call 
* lesprit des escaliers ;' — that, namely, which suggests to a man as he is 
going down stairs, the clever things he might have said in the ' salon.' 

Of this Frenchman's fireworks and crackers I retain nothing but the fol- 
lowing anecdote. A diplomatic writer, who passed as authority in the time 
of Louis the Fourteenth, concluded a treatise on the great privileges per- 
taining to foreign envoys, with the following words; — ' mais des qu'un am- 
bassadeur est mort, il rentre dans la vie privee.' 

January 22nd. 

The poor Duke of York is at length dead, after a long illness, and lay in 
state yesterday with great magnificence. I saw him in October, and found 
him, even then, the shadow of the robust stately man whom I had formerly 

so often seen at Lady L 's, and at his own house, where six bottles of 

claret after dinner scarcely made a perceptible change in his countenance. 
I remember that in one such evening, — it was indeed already after midnight, 
— he took some of his guests, among whom were the Austrian Ambassador, 
Count Meerveldt, Count Beroldingen, and myself, into his beautiful ar- 
moury. We tried to swing several Turkish sabres, but none of us had a 
very firm grasp ; whence it happened that the Duke and Count Meerveldt 
both scratched themselves with a sort of straight Indian sword, so as to 
draw blood. Count Meerveldt then wished to try if it cut as well as a real 
Damascus, and undertook to cut through one of the wax candles which 
stood on the table. The experiment answered so ill, that both the candles, 
candlesticks and all, fell to the ground and were extinguished. While we 
were groping about in the dark, and trying to find the door, the Duke's 

aide-de-camp, Colonel C , stammered out in great agitation, " By God, 

Sir, I remember the sword is poisoned !" You may conceive the agreeable 
feelings of the wounded at this intelligence. Happily on further examina- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 9!) 

lion it appeared that claret and not poison was at the bottom of the Colonel's 
exclamation. 

The Duke seems to be much regretted, and the whole country wears deep 
mourning for him, with crape on the hat, and black gloves, ' ce qui fait le 
desespoir' of all shopkeepers. People put their servants into black liveries, 
and write on paper with a broad black edge. Meantime the Christmas pan- 
tomimes go on as merrily as ever. It has a strange effect to see Harlequin 
and Columbine skipping about on the stage in all conceivable frivolities and 
antics, while the coal-black audience, dressed as for a funeral procession, 
clap and shout with delight. 

I this minute received your letter from B . Really so merry, I might 

almost say so pungent a one, you have not written of a long time. The 

B originals seem to have quite electrified you, and though I rejoice at 

it, I can't help being a little jealous. But you will soon come back to your 
original. I say with Caesar, I fear not the fat, but the lean; and so long as 
you tell me that you preserve your charming 'embonpoint,' I am easy. I 
had a great mind, however, to plague you a little in return ; but I know you 
don't bear jesting 'par distance' well, so I abstain. To vent my humour in 
some way, I send you a bit out of my journal, — a ' pendant' to your African 
Travels ; for the poor meagre journal is still alive, though it has received 
no nutriment by the month together, and the little it has had, has not the 
least ' haut gout.' Don't expect, therefore, anything facetious or satirical, 
but something quite serious. It is laid upon you as a punishment. 

EXTRACTS FROM MY JOURNAL. 

I was lately reading a review of Lady Morgan's Salvator Rosa. A pas- 
sage in it touched me deeply, ' et pour cause.' It is the very original de- 
scription of her hero, nearly as follows. 

" With a thirst for praise, which scarcely any applause could satisfy, Sal- 
vator united a quickness of perception that rendered him suspicious of pleas- 
ing, even at the moment he was most successful. A gaping mouth, a closing 
lid, a languid look, or an impatient hem ! threw him into utter confusion, 
and deprived him of all presence of mind, of all power of concealing his 
mortification. . . . Abandoned by the idle and the great, whom his delight- 
ful talents had so long contributed to amuse, he voluntarily excluded himself 
from the few true and staunch friends who clung to him in his adversity, 

and shut himself up equally from all he loved and all he despised 

His reference to this journey is curious, as being illustrative of those high 
imaginations, and lofty and lonely feelings, in which lay all the secret of his 
peculiar genius : while his pantings after solitude, his vain repinings, exhi- 
bit the struggles of a mind divided between a natural love of repose and a 
factitious ambition for the world's notice and the eclat of fame, — no unusual 
contrast in those who, being highly gifted and highly organized, are placed 
by nature above their species in all the splendid endowments of intellect; 
and who are, by the same nature, again drawn down to its level through their 

social and sympathetic affections His fine but fatal organization, 

which rendered him so susceptible of impressions, whether of good or evil, 
and which left him at times no shelter against ' horrible imaginings,' or 
against those real inflictions, calumny and slander, plunged him too fre- 
quently into fits of listless melancholy, when, disabused of all illusion, he 
saw the species to which he belonged in all the nakedness of its inherent 
infirmity." 



100 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Yes, this picture is* copied from the very soul; and it is no less true, that 
a man born with such a disposition can never feel at ease or happy in the 
world which surrounds him, unless he be placed very much above it, or live 
in it entirely unnoticed. 

So far I was led by the thoughts of others. Now I must conclude for 
to-day with a few of my own, the subject of which lies far nearer to our in- 
most hearts; and discuss a question, the full investigation of which must in- 
terest every one, be he ever so little a philosopher by profession. 

What is conscience? 

Conscience has unquestionably a twofold nature, as it has a twofold 
source. The one flows from our highest strength, the other from our greatest 
weakness ; the one from the spirit of God dwelling in us, the other from 
sensual fear. Perfectly to dissever and distinguish these two kinds of con- 
science, is necessary to that serenity of mind which can arise only out of 
the utmost possible clearness : for man, when he has once got beyond the 
original dominant instinct of feeling, attains to the Permanent, even the re- 
cognition of truth, only by mental labour and conflict, — the moral 'sweat 
of his brow.' 

Man, however, is a whole, compounded of countless parts ; and it is only 
in the perfect equipoise of these parts, that, as man — that is, as a being at 
once sensual and spiritual — he can obtain perfect happiness and contentment. 
It is the common, ever-recurring error, to strive to cultivate one side predo- 
minantly : — with one man it is the province of religion ; with another, that 
of severe reason ; with the man of the world, those of the understanding and 
the senses alone. But all these together, exercised, enjoyed, and blended, 
so to speak, with artist-like skill, can alone produce the most perfect Life 
for this earth, and for our destinies while upon it,— the complete, entire 
Truth. 

Under this point of view, then, must that which we call Conscience be 
considered, and the true distinguished from the false. 

Under the head of the True, I understand the infallible suggestions of the 
divine spirit in us ; which restrains us from evil, generally, as from the 
wholly one-sided, inconsistent, and negative : and this requires no further 
explanation. By the False, I mean that which arises only from the Con- 
ventional ; from custom, authority, from subtleties which have grown out 
of these foundations, and from overstrained anxiety; — in a word, from fear. 
Delicate, excitable natures, in whom the cerebral system predominates, in 
whom, therefore, the head and the fancy are more powerful and active than 
the heart : in whom the distributing intellect too easily breaks up and scat- 
ters the depth and intensity of the full feelings, are most subject to this kind 
of error. It is, however, so difficult to follow these subtle ramifications and 
secret counter-workings, that we often take that for a primary feeling, which 
is only the retro-action of a sophistical intellect. 

Now, as right and wrong, applied to the individual actions of human 
life with all their various conditions and intricacies, must obviously be rela- 
tive ; nothing remains but that every man should, with the help of all the 
powers of his soul, make quite clear to himself, sincerely and faithfully lay 
down to himself, what he can reasonably regard as right and what as wrong ; 
and having ascertained it, thenceforward tranquilly apply that standard; and 
not trouble himself further about his so-called conscience ; that is, the inward 
uneasiness and uncertainty which disturb the mind under new and conflicting 
circumstances. These cannot possibly be avoided ; since the distinctions 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 101 

we have heard of right and wrong, reasonable and absurd, in our childhood 
and early youth, will ever exercise an irresistible influence.* 

To give a few exemplifications. — A man of gentle temper, educated in 
the fear of God and the love of man, who becomes a soldier, the first time 
he has to take deliberate aim at human lile will hardly do it without a strong 
pang of conscience. So, at least, it was with me. Nevertheless it is his 
duty ; a duty which may be justified on higher, although worldly grounds ; 
so long at least as mankind are not further advanced than they now are. 

In like manner, he who after a long struggle forswears the religion of his 
fathers — the daily repeated lesson of his youth, — and embraces another on 
full conviction that it is better, will generally feel a slight, but difficultly sub- 
dued inquietude ; and it is with that, just as it is with the most absurd fear 
of ghosts in those who have been educated in the belief of ghosts. They 
have a ghost-conscience, which they cannot get rid of. Nay, even more; 
with irritable characters, the mere persuasion that others hold them guilty 
of an evil action will give them so much the feeling of an evil conscience, 
that it appears in all its usual outward signs — embarrassment, blushing, and 
turning pale. 

This may be carried so far as to lead to insanity. For instance : A man 
universally believed to have killed another, or one who really, though quite 
innocently, has killed another, may never enjoy a moment's tranquillity or 
happiness again. We even read of a Bramin, whose religious creed makes 
the murder of an insect as criminal as that of a man, who killed himself be- 
cause an English ' savant' told him that he never drank a glass of water 
without destroying thousands of invisible creatures. 'II n'y a qu'un pas 
du sublime au ridicule.' 

Ugoni, in his Life of one of the most conscientious of men, Passaroni, 
relates that as he was one day going over the bridge of the ' Porta Orien- 
tale,' he saw a man lying fast asleep on the broad stone parapet, whence, if 
suddenly waked, he would probably have fallen into the river. He seized 
him by the arm, with difficulty aroused him, and with still greater made him 
understand why he had waked him. The porter, in a passion, requited his 
trouble with a hearty curse, and bid him go to the devil. Passaroni, greatly 
mortified and grieved at being the innocent cause of the man's wrath, pulled 
out a handful of coin, and gave it to him to drink the giver's health. There- 
upon he left him quite satisfied ; but had scarcely reached the end of the 
bridge, when it struck him that his gift would probably produce even worse 
consequences than his waking of the man had done ; for that it would very 
likely lead the poor fellow into the crime of drunkenness. He immediately 
hurried back in great anxiety, found the man fortunately at the same spot, 
where he had laid himself down again exactly in his old position, and begged 
him, with some embarrassment, to give him back so much of the money as 
he did not want for his most pressing necessities. But as the rage of the 
porter, who thought himself fooled, now boiled over more furiously than 
ever, Passaroni devised another expedient: "Here, my friend," said he, 
" as you will not give me anything back, take another scudo, and promise 

* Cases moreover do occur, in which the conscience is, so to speak, right and wrong 1 
at the same time. An act may be necessary, which is unquestionably, viewed on one 
side, culpable, but which is chosen as the lesser of two evils ; in which case no rea- 
sonable moralist will contend that it is unpardonable. In telling a compulsory lie, for 
instance, we must ever make a considerable sacrifice of our moral dignity, though by 
refusing to tell it, we might be guilty of the basest treachery to parents or friends. — 
Editor. 



102 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

me solemnly, that if you spend all the rest of the money in drink, you will 
buy something with that scudo to eat with it." Having received this pro- 
mise from the ' fachino,' Passaroni's conscience was at length at rest, and 
he went contentedly home. 

We must, I repeat, — if we would not be either unhappy, or ridiculous, 
and like a reed shaken with every wind, — educate our consciences as well 
as all the other faculties of our souls : that is, while we preserve them in all 
their purity, prescribe to them due limits ; for even the noblest are other- 
wise liable to deterioration and perversion. The simplest and most univer- 
sally applicable and universally intelligible guide is the precept of Christ, 
" Do not unto others (nor, we might add, to yourselves) what ye would not 
that others do unto you." 

But as there exist, as yet, no true Christians, certain exceptions to this rule 
are, and, in the present state of society, must be, permitted, as for instance, 
the case of the soldier above cited ; or that of a man who obeys the laws of 
honour, which in certain stations it is utterly impossible to brave. And then 
there remains no other solution of the difficulty, than to allow to others the 
same liberty of making exceptions that we find ourselves compelled to claim ; 
— in this way we just manage to preserve charity, and, at all events, that 
justice which is called the ' lex talionis.' 

That man has a happy, an enviable existence, to whom nature and sur- 
rounding circumstances have made it easy or possible to walk constantly in a 
beaten track; to be, from youth upwards, kind and loving, moderate in his 
desires and pure in his actions. The first fault is pregnant with sorrow and 
evil ; for, as our philosophical poet so truly says, 

"Das eben ist der Fluch des Bosen 
Dass es fortwuchernd immer Boses muss gebahren!" 

And regeneration in this life is not always to be attained. May it not, then, 
be the last and highest act of mercy of Eternal Love, to have appointed death 
as a means of wiping out the confused and blotted scrawl, and restoring the 
troubled, misguided, soul to the condition of a pure white sheet, ready for 
happier trials? For that upon which the Holy has already been written 
here, must far higher bliss be in store. All-loving Justice punishes not as 
weak man punishes ; but it can reward only where reward is due, — where 
it follows as an inevitable consequence of the past. 

January 21s/. 

It is become very cold again, and the fire-place, ' wo Tag und Nacld die 
Kohle brcnntf is unhappily quite insufficient to produce a warm room, such 
as our stoves — which, spite of their ugliness, I now think of as admirably 
efficient — procure us. To set my blood in motion I ride the more, and to- 
day, on my way home, saw one of the many Cosmorames exhibited here, 
which certainly affords a very agreeable chamber journey, as they call it in 
B . The picture of the Coronation of Charles the Tenth in the Cathe- 
dral at Rheims, doubtless gave me a far more commodious view of it than I 
should have had in the crowded church. But what tasteless costume, from 
the King to the lowest courtier ! New and old mixed in the most ludicrous 
and offensive manner ! If people will perforin such farces, the least they 
can do is to make them as pretty as those at Franconi's. The ruins of Pal- 
myra lay outstretched in solemn majesty in the boundless Desert, which a 
caravan in the distant horizon is slowly traversing under a torrid sun. 

The most perfect illusion was the great fire at Edinburg : — it actually burn- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 103 

ed. You saw the flames stream upwards ; then clouds of black smoke as- 
cend ; while the view of the whole landscape incessantly changed with the 
changes of this fearful light, just as in a real fire. Probably the proprietor's 
kitchen was behind the picture, and the fire which heated the fancy of cre- 
dulous spectators like myself, roasted the leg of mutton which our shillings 
paid for. 

January 28th. 

For some days I have vegetated too completely to have much to write to 

5 ? ou about. This morning I was not a little surprised to see R , whom I 

thought almost with you, enter my room. He had been shipwrecked on his 
way to Hamburg, and driven back by the storm to Harwich ; had passed a 
whole night in imminent peril, and is so heartily frightened, that he will hear 
no more of the sea as long as he lives. I therefore send him by Calais, and 
only write that you may not be uneasy. He has unfortunately lost some of 
the things he took for you. 

Hyde Park afforded a new spectacle this morning. The large lake was 
frozen, and swarmedwith agayand countless multitude of skaters and others, 
who enjoyed these wintry pleasures, so rare here, with true child-like de- 
light. A few years ago, in weather like this, a strange wager was laid. The 
notorious Hunt deals in shoe-blacking : a large sort of wagon filled with it 
and drawn by four fine horses, which the young gentleman his son drives 
' four-in-hand,' daily traverses the city in all directions. This young Hunt 
betted a hundred pounds that he would drive the equipage in question at full 
speed across the ' Serpentine,' and won his wager in brilliant style. A. 
caricature immortalized this feat, and the sale of his blacking, as is reasonable, 
increased threefold. 

My house is grown very musical, for Miss A , a newly-engaged opera- 
singer, has come to live in it. The thin English walls give me the advan- 
tage of hearing her every morning gratis. 

I have not been well for some days. The town air does not agree with 
me, and compels me to follow a ' regime' like that in your song : — 

" un bouillon 
cl'un roguon 
de papillon." 

C Hall, Feb. 2d. 



Lord D , to whose wife I had been introduced in London invited, me 

to visit him for a few days at his country house. I accepted his invitation 

with more pleasure because C Hall is the place of which Repton says 

that he had laboured at its embellishment, together with its proprietor, forty 
years ago. Indeed it does him the greatest honour; though, from all I saw 
and heard, it appeared to me that the admirable taste of its Lord was entitled 
to the largest share of the merit ; especially in sparing old trees which Rep- 
ton would have removed. Nevertheless an honourable feeling of gratitude 
has dedicated an alcove, commanding a wonderfully beautiful prospect, to 
the man to whom landscape-gardening is so much indebted. Repton's son, 

who was with us, had told Lady D a great deal about M ; and as 

she is almost as good a ' parkomane' as myself, we had a very attractive 
subject in common, and walked about for some hours in the flower-garden, 
which is still more tasteful than splendid, and is adorned with some graceful 
marble statues by Canova. 



104 LETTEllS ON ENGLAND, 

I did not see the master of the house, who was suffering' from gout, till 
we came down to dinner, when I met a large company ; amongst others 

Lord M -, who had just been to inspect the ships of war lying in the 

Thames. 

Lord D was lying on a sofa, covered with a Scotch plaid, and em- 
barrassed me a little by his first address. 

" You don't know me," said he, " and yet we saw each other very often 
thirty years ago." Now as I was in frocks at the time he spoke of, I was 
obliged to beg for a further explanation, though I cannot say I was much 
delighted at having my age so fully discussed before all the company, — for 
you know I claim not to look more than thirty. However, I could but ad- 
mire Lord D 's memory. He remembered every circumstance of his 

visit to my parents with the Duke of Portland, and recalled to me many a 
little forgotten incident. What originals were then to be found, and how 
joyously and heartily people entered into all sorts of amusement in those 
days, his conversation gave me new and very entertaining proof of. 

He mentioned among others a certain Baron, who believed as firmly in 
ghosts as in the Gospel, and held Cagliostro for a sort of Messias. One 
day when he went out alone, to skate on the lake near our house, the whole 
party dressed themselves in sheets and other things borrowed from the ward- 
robe of the theatre, and presented to the eyes of the terrified llluminatus 
the awful appearance of a party of ghosts, in broad daylight, on the ice. In 
mortal terror he fell on his knees, spite of his skates ; and with a volubility 
which the venerable Lord could not think of, even now, without laughing, 
uttered "Abracadabra," and bits, of Faust's incantations, interspersed with 
fragments of quavering psalms. During this, one of the ghosts, who, with 
the help of a long stick under his sheet, made himself sometimes tall and 
sometimes low, slipped and fell, stripped of all disguise, directly before the 
knees of the praying Baron. His faith was too robust, however, to be 
shaken by such a trifle. On the contrary, his terror was increased to such 
a pitch, that he sprang up, fell again, inconsequence of his unlucky ' chaus- 
sure,' but soon scrambled up, and with a dexterity no one gave him credit 
for before, vanished like the wind, amid the cheers of the whole company. 

Even the confession of the whole joke by the actors in it never could 
convince him that he had been hoaxed, and no power on earth could ever 
induce him to see the frightful lake again as long' as he remained at M . 

You know I cannot avoid the reflections which often fill me with melan- 
choly even on the most ujyous occasions. So was it with me now, as Lord 
D thus conjured upfaefore me the picture of departed times ; — as he eu- 
logized my grandfather's amiable character, described my mother's high 
spirit, and what a wild child I was : ' Helas, ils sont passes ces jours de 
fete.' The amiable man has long lain mouldering in his grave ; the high- 
spirited young woman is old, and no longer high-spirited ; and even the 
wild boy is more than tamed — nay, not very far from those days in which 
he will say, " I have no pleasure in them :" the mad-cap young Englishman 
who played the ghost on the ice, lay before me, an old man, tortured with 
gout, stretched helpless on a sofa, — the tale of the merry pranks of his 
youth interrupted by sighs extorted by pain ; while the poor fool whom he 
so terrified as ghost has long been a ghost himself, and the good Lord would 
be not. a little alarmed if his visit happened to be returned. "Oh world, 
world !" as Napoleon said.* 

* I must explain this exclamation. When Napoleon, after the defeat at Aspern, 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 105 

February Zd : — Evening. 

Lord D possesses a fine collection of pictures, among which are Ti- 
tian's celebrated Venus ; the death of Regulus, by Salvator Rosa ; a large 
picture of Rubens, which has frequently been engraved ; and a very fine 
Guido. In the two latter indeed, a not very agreeable subject, a lifeless 
head, is the principal object; in the one that of Cyrus, in the other that of 
John the Baptist. But Guido's Herodias is another of those figures instinct 
with the genius of poetical, divine beauty, uniting the most lovely woman- 
liness with the deepest tragic expression, which . leave so indelible an im- 
pression, and are so seldom found in reality. There is a lady of your ac- 
quaintance who corresponds with this ideal, Countess A of B . 

She was, when I knew her,* the most beautiful and richly dressed woman I 
ever beheld. Perfect symmetry, absolute harmony, reigned in her person 
and in her mind ; so that the most heterogeneous things equally became her. 
Majestic as a queen, when she was 'en representation;' distinguished by 
the most easy and graceful manners, the most exquisite knowledge of the 
world, when doing the honours of her own house; and by the most 'naive,' 
touching kindness and sweetness in the circle of her family ; — hut under 
every aspect rendered moi'e interesting and impressive by a trace of thought- 
ful melancholy never wholly effaced, allied to that perfect feminine tender- 
ness which gives to woman the highest and most resistless charm in the 
eyes of men; — her resemblance, to this picture of Guido's was striking. 
Two very pretty attendants of Herodias are in admirable contrast with the 
main figure. They are perfect ladies-in-waiting, who have no soul for any- 
thing beyond their court and their service ; and their beauty receives from 
its very unmeaningness a certain rather animal character, which we can con- 
template with an agreeable carelessness — a sort of repose to the mind after 
the profound and thrilling impression made by the main figure. The one 
is watching the glance of her mistress with an unmeaning smile; the other 
looks at the head of the Martyr in the charger with the same indifference as 
if it were ' a pudding.' 

I must describe to you, once for all, the ' vie de chateau' in England ; of 
course only the common canvas, on which the Special is in every case em- 
broidered by each man according to his fancy. The groundwork is in all 
the same, nor did I find it at all altered from what I formerly saw here. It 
forms, without any question, the most agreeable side of English life ; for 
there is great freedom, and a banishment of most of the wearisome ceremo- 
nies which, with us, tire both host and guest. Notwithstanding this, one 
finds not less luxury than in the town ; this is rendered less burthensome by the 
custom I mentioned of receiving guests only during a short period of the 
year, and on invitation. 

The ostentation which, doubtless, lies at the root of such customs, we 
may well forgive, for the better reception it procures us. 

Strangers have generally only one room allotted to them, usually a spa- 
cious apartment on the first floor. Englishmen seldom go into this room 
except to sleep, and to dress twice a-day, which, even without company and 
in the most strictly domestic circle, is always ' de riguer ;' for all meals are 

put off in a frail boat with a few followers for the Island of Lobau, General Tcher- 
nicheff, then a very young man, was by his side. He relates, that the Emperor sate 
profoundly absorbed in thought, spoke to nobody, and only now and then broke into 
the half-suppressed exclamation, ' O monde, O monde !' He might, perhaps, silently 

add, 'tu m'echappes' — as a few years more verified Editor. 

* And is still.— Editoh. 

14 



106 LETTEItS ON ENGLAND, 

commonly taken in company, and any one who wants to write does it in the 
library. There, also, those who wish to converse give each other ' rendez- 
vous,' to avoid either the whole society, or particular parties, in the forma- 
tion of which people are quite at liberty. Here you have an opportunity of 
gossiping for hours with the young ladies, who are always very litcrarily 
inclined. Many a marriage is thus concocted or destroyed, between the 
' corpus juris' on the one side and Bouffler's Works on the other, while 
fashionable novels, as a sort of intermediate link, lie on the tables in the 
middle. 

Ten or eleven is the hour for breakfast, at which you may appear in • ne- 
gligee.' It is always of the same kind as that I described to you in the inn, 
only of course more elegant and complete. The ladies do the honours of 
the table very agreeably. If you come down later, when the breakfast is 
removed, a servant brings you what you want. In many houses he is on 
the watch till one o'clock, or even later, to see that stragglers do not starve. 
That half-a-dozen newspapers must lie on the table for every one to read 
who likes„is, of course, understood. The men now either go out hunting 
or shooting, or on business ; the host does the same, without troubling him- 
self in the least degree about his guests (the truest kindness and good breed- 
ing;) and about half an hour before dinner the company meet again in the 
drawing-room in elegant toilette. 

The course and order of dinner I have already described to you. 

* * * # * * * * * * * * * 

England is the true land of contrasts — ' du haut et du has' at every step. 
Thus, even in elegant houses in the country, coachmen and grooms wait at 
dinner, and are not always free from the odour of the stable. At the second 
breakfast, the ' luncheon,' which is served a few hours after the first, and is 
generally eatenonly by the women (who like to make ' la petite bouche' at 
dinner,) there are no napkins, and altogether less neatness and elegance than 
at the other meals. 

This as parenthesis : — I now return to the ' order of the day.' When the 
men have drunk as much as they wish, they go in search of tea, coffee, and 
the ladies, and remain for some hours with them, though without mixing 
much. To-day, for instance, I observed the company was distributed in 
the following manner. Our suffering host lay on the sofa, dosing a- little ; 
five ladies and gentlemen were very attentively reading in various sorts of 
books (of this number I was one, having som« views of parks before me ;) 
another had been playing for a quarter of an hour with a long-suffering dog ; 
two old Members of Parliament were disputing vehemently about the ' Corn 
Bill;' and the rest of the company were in a dimly-lighted room adjoining, 
where a pretty girl was playing on the piana-forte, and another, with a most 
perforating voice, singing ballads. 

I cannot help remarking here, that Lord and Lady D are among the 

most enlightened, unpretending, and therefore most agreeable, of the people 
of rank here. He is of the moderate Opposition, and desires the real good 
of his country, and nothing else ; a patriot wholly devoid of egotism, — the 
noblest title that a cultivated man can bear. She is goodness, cordiality, and 
unpretendingness itself. 

A light supper of cold meats and fruits is brought, at which every one 
helps himself, and shortly after midnight all retire. A number of small can- 
dlesticks stand ready on a side-table; every man takes his own, aud lights 
himself up to bed; for the greater part of the servants, who have to rise 
early, are, as is fair and reasonable, gone to bed. The eternal setting of 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 



107 



servants in an ante-room is not the custom here ; and except at appointed 
times, when their services are expected, they are little seen, and one waits 
on oneself. 

At night I found a most excellent chintz bed with a canopy. It was so 
enormously large that I lay like an icicle in it,, — for the distant fire was too 
remote to give any sensible warmth. 

February 5th. 

Between ourselves be it said, however agreeable, however unconstrained 
may be one's abode in another's house, it is always too constrained, too 
unaccustomed, above all too dependent for me, proud and fond of ease as I 
am, ever to feel perfectly at home. This I can be nowhere but within my 
own walls, and, next to that, in a travelling carriage or an inn. This may 
not be the best taste in the world, but it is mine. There are so many men 
who have no taste of their own, at all, that I am delighted with myself for 
having one, though it be not of the best. I shall therefore not exhaust the 
term of my invitation, but evacuate my large bed to-morrow, and proceed 
to Brighton, a watering-place now in great fashion. 

I have ridden all over the park here, in company with Lord D 's very 

kind and polite son. It is less remarkable for features of striking beauty, 
than for the absence of all defect. Some views through wooded valleys, of 
the distant Thames, the town of Gravesend and its rising masts, have how- 
ever a grand character ; but nothing can exceed the incomparable skill with 
which the walls of wood within the park are planted, in masterly imitation 
of nature. As a study, I should recommend Cobham, in some respects, 
more than any of the parks I have described ; though in extent and costliness 
it is surpassed by many. It is very modest, but to the admirer of nature its 
character is only the more delightful and satisfactory. It has also a great 
variety of hill, valley, and wood. 

I took leave of Lady D in her own room ; a little sanctuary, furnish- 
ed with delightful disorder and profusion : — the walls full of small 'consoles,' 
surmounted with mirrors and crowded with choice curiosities ; and the floor 
covered with splendid camellias, in baskets, looking as if they grew there. 

Among these flowers, dear Julia, I take my leave of you. I entreat you 
to send me an answer of equal length, that your conscience may not reproach 
you with loving me less than I love you. 

Your hearty Friend, L . 



LETTER XII. 

Brighton, Feb. 7th, 1827. 
Beloved, 

I travelled these sixty miles yesterday with great rapidity, and in the 
most charming state of indolence, without even the exertion of looking up; 
— for one must once in a while travel like a fashionable Englishman. 

It seems that here is a better atmosphere than in any other part of the 
land of fog ; the bright sunshine waked me this morning as early as nine 
o'clock. 

1 soon went out ; — first on the Marine Parade, which stretches to a con- 
siderable extent along the sea ; then made a tour through the large, clean, 
and very cheerful town, which with its broad streets is like the newest parts 



108 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

of London; and concluded with visits to several London acquaintances. I 
then rode out, for I had sent my horses here before me. Vainly did I look 
around for a tree. The country is perfectly naked: nothing is to be seen 
but hilly downs covered with short turf; and sea and sky are the only pic- 
turesque objects : — even this first day of my visit they greeted me with the 
most beautiful sunset. The majestic orb was veiled in a rosy transparent 
mist, so that it darted forth no rays, but was like a ball of massive gold, 
glowing with the most fervid heat : as it touched the water, it appeared slow- 
ly to dissolve, and to spread itself over the surface of the blue deep. At 
length Ocean swallowed the fiery globe ; the burning hues faded from red to 
violet, then gradually to whitish gray, and at length the waves driven by the 
evening wind, dashed murmuring on the shore in the dim twilight, as if in 
triumph over the buried sun. 

A distinguished old Minister enjoyed this noble spectacle with me, and 
was fully alive to its beauty. Lord Harrowby is an amiable man, of mild 
refined manners, and of great experience of the world and of business. 

February 8th. 

Public rooms, lists of visitors (Badelisten), &c, do not exist here. Brigh- 
ton has only the name of a bathing-place in our sense of the word, and is 
chiefly resorted to by the inhabitants of London for recreation and pure air. 
People who have no country-house, or who find London too expensive, spend 
the winter, which is the fashionable season, here. The King was formerly 
very fond of Brighton, and built a strange Oriental Palace, which seen from 
the adjoining heights, with its cupolas and minarets, looks exactly like the 
pieces on a chess-board. The interior is splendidly though fantastically 
furnished. Although it has cost enormous sums, its possessor, long sick of 
it, is said to have shown a desire to pull it down, which indeed would be no 
great subject of lamentation. 

The only large trees I have seen in the neighbourhood are in the gardens 
of this Palace. But the walks by the sea are so ageeeable that one does very 
well without ; especially the large Chain Pier, which extends a thousand 
feet into the sea, and from whose extremity the steam-vessels sail for Dieppe 
and Boulogne. 

Not far from thence an Indian has established Oriental baths, where people 
are shampooed after the Turkish fashion, which is said to be very healthful 
and invigorating, and is in great favour with the fashionable world. I found 
the interior arrangements very European. The treatment is like that in the 
Russian vapour-baths, only I think not so good. I cannot help thinking the 
sudden cold after such profuse perspiration very dangerous. 

I thought the method of drying linen more worth imitating. It is laid in 
a sort of wardrobe lined with tin, and kept at an equal heat by means of 
steam. 

February 9th. 

The sun has disappeared again, and the cold has returned with such force 
that I am writing to you in gloves — for the better preservation of my white 
hands, to which I, like Lord Byron, attach great importance. I honestly 
confess I don't see that a man is ' un fat' merely for trying to preserve the 
little beauty God has given him ; at all events chapped hands are a horror 
to me and always were. — Talking of this, I remember that I was once in 
the boudoir of a very beautiful woman in Strasburg, where I met Field- 
marshal W (then only General), who in eulogizing Napoleon laid a 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 109 

peculiar stress on his temperance, adding in a contemptuous tone, " A hero 
could not be a ' gourmand.' " Now the fair lady, who was otherwise a very 
kind friend of mine, knew me to be not quite insensible to ' bonne chere,' 
to gratify her malicious pleasure in teasing me, made the General repeat his 
observation. Though I never set up for a hero, (except in a little romance 
or two, here and there,) I felt that 1 blushed ; one of those stupidities of 
which I never could break myself, even on many occasions where there was 
no ground for it. Provoked at myself, I said with some pique, " It is for- 
tunate for the lovers of a good table, General, that there are a few brilliant 
exceptions to your rule. Remember Alexander : — it is true that a too luxu- 
rious feast led him into the burning of Persepolis ; — but I think you will 
allow him to have been a hero for all that : and 'gourmandise' did not prevent 
Frederick the Great from acquiring immortal renown, both as a warrior and 
ruler. — You, General, who have fought with the French with so much glory, 
should not attack a good 'cuisine;' for that nation, however, distinguished 
be her generals, will obtain a wider and perhaps more lasting fame from her 
cooks." This last sentence was doubtless inspired by a prophetic spirit ; 
and how would the enthusiastic eulogist of Napoleon have wondered, had I 
told him that in a little while he would stand opposed to the great 'non- 
gourmond' himself, and would receive one of the last effectual ' coups de 
griffes' of the sick lion. 

You think, I dare say, dear Julia, that this anecdote is as much in place 

here as one of our friend H 's ' a-propos.' But you are mistaken. I 

now go to adduce Alcibiades and Poniatowsky, as examples of men distin- 
guished for attention to dress and to their persons ; thus proving from ex- 
perience that neither sensibility to good cheer, nor a little ' fatuite,' are any 
obstacles to heroism, if other qualities be not wanting. 

A visit from Count F -, one of the most agreeable and respectable re- 
presentatives of Napoleon's time, who carried into the Imperial Court ' les 
souvenirs de l'ancien regime,' and into the present one the reputation of 
spotless integrity and fidelity, (a most rare instance !) — here interrupted me. 
He came to invite me to dinner to-morrow. This has detained me : — it is 
too late to ride ; I am not in the humour to seek Club society : I shall put 

on a second dressing-gown, dream about you and M , read over your 

letters, and patiently freeze in my room,' — for more than eight degrees of 
heat I find it impossible to procure by means of an open fire in my airy and 
many-windowed room. — ' Au revoir,' then. 

February 10th. 

It was fair that I should indemnify myself to-day for my confinement to 
my room, so I wandered about in the neighbourhood for many hours. I 
enjoyed my freedom the more, as I was to execute myself in the evening 
at a great subscription ball. 

The country all around is certainly very remarkable ; for in a four hours 
ride I did not see a single full-grown tree. Yet the numerous hills, the 
large town in the distance, several smaller ones scattered about, the sea and 
ships — all under rapidly changing lights, sufficiently diversified the land- 
scape ; and even the contrast with the generally well-wooded character of 
England was not without its charms. The sun at length retired to rest in- 
cognito, the sky cleared, and the moon rose cloudless and brilliant over the 
waters. I now turned my horse's head from the hills down to the sea, and 
rode five or six miles, about the distance to Brighton, hard on the edge of 
the waves along the sandy shore. The tide was coming in, and my horse 



110 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

sometimes shyed when a wave, crowned witli snowy foam, rolled under 
his feet and quickly retreated as if in sport. 

I love nothing better than to ride alone by moonlight on the wide shore, 
— alone with the plashing and roaring and murmuring of the waves ; — so 
near to the mysterious deep, that my horse can only be kept within reach 
of its rolling waters by force, and as soon as his rein is loosened darts away 
with redoubled speed towards the firm land. 

How different from this poetical scene was the prosaic ball! — which 
moreover so little answered my expectations that I was perfectly astonish- 
ed. A narrow staircase led directly into the ball-room, which was ill-lighted 
and miserably furnished, and surrounded with worsted cords to divide the 
dancers from the spectators. An orchestra for the musicians was hung with 
ill-washed white draperies, which looked like sheets hung out to dry. Ima- 
gine a second room near it, with benches along the walls, and a large tea- 
table in the middle ; in both rooms the numerous company raven black from 
head to foot, gloves inclusive ; a melancholy style of dancing, without the 
least trace of vivacity or joyousness ; so that the only feeling you have is 
that of compassion for the useless fatigue the poor people are enduring ;— 
and now you have a true idea of the Brighton Almack's, for so these very 
fashionable balls are called. The whole establishment is droll enough. 
Almack's balls in London are the resort of people of the highest rank dur- 
ing the season, which lasts from April to June; and five or six of the most 

intensely fashionable ladies (Princess L among the number), who are 

called Patronesses, distribute the tickets. It is an immense favour to obtain 
one ; and, for people who do not belong to the very highest or most modish 
world, very difficult. Intrigues are set on foot months beforehand, and the 
Lady-patronesses flattered in the meanest and most servile manner, to secure 
so important an advantage ; for those who have never been seen at Almack's 
are regarded as utterly unfashionable — I might almost say disreputable ; and 
the would-be-fashionable English world naturally holds this to be the great- 
est of all possible calamities. So true is this, that a novel was lately writ- 
ten on this subject, which contains a very fair delineation of London socie- 
ty, and has gone through three editions. On nearer observation, however, 
one sees that it betrays more of the ante-chamber than of the ' salon,' — 
that the author is one, as the Abbe de Voisenon said, ' qui a ecoute aux 
portes.' 

How admirably well-informed the English are concerning foreigners is 
seen in a passage in this novel, in which the wife of a foreign ambassador, 
born however in England, is extremely facetious on the ignorant London- 
ers who assigned a higher rank to a German Prince than to her husband the 
Baron, whose title was far nobler. " But the word Prince," adds she, 
" whose nullity is well known to everybody on the Continent, dazzled my 
stupid countrymen." ' C'est bien vrai,' says a Frenchman, ' un Due cirait 
mes bottes a Naples, et a Petersbourg un Prince Russe me rasait tous les 
matins.' " As the English generally mis-spell and mis-quote foreign words 
and phrases, I strongly suspect that a slight mistake has crept in here, and 
that it ought to be printed, " un Prince Russe me rossait tous les matins."* 

* It is natural enough that it should be difficult for the English, who trouble them- 
selves so little about anything non-English, to distinguish the respective ranks o( Ger- 
man, Russian, and French princes, and that they therefore place them sometimes too 
high, sometimes too low. In England and France, there are properly no Princes but 
those of the blood royal. If Englishmen or Frenchmen bear such titles, they are for- 
eign ones, and were given to the younger sons of noble families ; for instance, the 



IRELAND AND FHANCE. Ill 

You may partly conceive the burlesque effect such a fashionable novel 
produces on people in the middling society of London, who are continually 
groping in the dark after ' le bel air,' are consequently in perpetual terror 
and agony, lest they should betray their acquaintance with the great world, 
and thus generally make themselves exquisitely ludicrous. I had a very 
amusing example of this a few weeks before the publication of the book in 
question. 

I was invited, with several other foreigners, to dine with a very rich 
* * * * * # * * * * 

Among them was a German Prince, who had visited at the house before, 
and, luckily for the farce, a German Baron also. When dinner was an- 
nounced,. the Prince advanced, as usual, to the lady of the house to hand 
her out, and was not a little amazed when she turned her back upon him 
with a slight curtesy, and took the arm of the most agreeably-surprised 
Baron. A laugh, which I really found it impossible to suppress, almost 
offended the good Prince, who could not explain to himself the extraordi- 
nary behaviour of our hostess ; but, as I instantly guessed the cause, I soon 
helped him out of his wonderment. 

Regardless of rank, he now took the prettiest woman of the party ; while 
I, for my part, made haste to secure — — , that I might be sure of an amus- 
ing conversation during dinner. The soup was hardly removed, when I 
expressed to her as politely as. 1 could, how much her nice tact and exact 
knowledge of the usages of even foreign society had surprised me. " Ah," 

replied she, " when one has been so long, one becomes thoroughly 

acquainted with the world." " Certainly," replied I, " especially in , 

where you have all that sort of thing in black and white." " You see," 
said she, speaking rather low, " we know well enough that ' a foreign 
Prince' is nothing very great, but to a Baron we give the honour due." 
" Admirably distinguished !" exclaimed I ; " but in Italy you must be on 
your guard, for there ' barone' means a rascal." " Is it possible ?" said 
she; " what a strange title!" " Yes, madam, titles on the Continent are 
mysterious things ; and were you the Sphinx herself, you would never 
fathom the enigma." " May I help you to some fish ?" said she. " With 
great pleasure," answered I, and found the turbot, even without a title, ex- 
cellent. 

But, to return to Almack's : — The oddest thing is, that one of these 
tickets, for which many English men and women struggle and strive, as if 
for life and death, are, after all, to be paid for with the sum of ten shillings ; 
for Almack's are neither more nor less than balls for money. ' Quelle folie 
que le mode !' We are sometimes forced to conclude that our planet is the 
mad-house of the solar system. 

In Brighton we find the copy of London in little. The present Lady- 
patronesses are * * * * * * * 
When I entered, I saw no one of my acquaintance, and therefore addressed 

Prince de Polignac, as second son, bears the Roman title of Prince ; the eldest, is 
Duke de Polignac. 

With the exception of a man of very exalted merit, there are no Princes in Ger- 
many who are not of old family and high rank, with the appurtenant rights and pri- 
vileges ; therefore Princes have in that country the first rank immediately after the 
reigning houses. In Russia, on the other hand, the title of Prince is as good as no- 
thing, since the service alone gives rank, privilege or importance ; and in Italy, the 
title is not worth much more. The English mix all this up together, and seldom know 
what sort of tone to take with a foreigner, or what place to assign to him. 



112 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

myself to a gentleman near me to show me the Marchioness of , from 

whom I had received my ticket, through the ' entremise' of Countess F . 

I was obliged to present myself to her, to return my thanks ; and found her 
a very kind, amiable, domestic woman, who had never quitted England. 

She introduced me to her daughters, and also to a certain Lady , who 

spoke very good German. That is the fashion now, and the young ladies i 
labour hard to accomplish it. 

I afterwards found a gentleman of my acquaintance who introduced me 

to several very pretty young ladies, among whom Miss W , a niece of 

Lord C , was peculiarly distinguished. She was brought up in Ger- 
many, and is more German than English, — >of course an advantage in my 
eyes. She was by far the prettiest and most graceful girl in the room, so 
that I was almost tempted to dance once more ; though from vanity (for I 
always danced badly) I renounced that so-called pleasure years ago. I might 
safely enough have attempted it here, for God knows, nowhere do people 
jump about more awkwardly ; and a man who waltzes in time is a real cu- 
riosity. But it seems to me too ludicrous, to join the worshippers of the 
tarantula so far on my way towards forty. ' II est vrai que la fortune m'a 
souvent envoye promener, mais danser — c'est trop fort!' 

I was told that the chief of a Highland clan, with a name as long as a 
Spaniard's, — a descendant of some island king, and proud as Holofernes of 
a thousand years of noble ancestry, — wished to make my acquaintance. I 
had reason to congratulate myself on making his ; for I found him a living 
model of one of Walter Scott's pictures. A genuine Highland Scot, hang- 
ing with body and soul on ancestry and ancient customs, having great con- 
tempt for the English, full of fire, good-natured, loyal-hearted, and brave ; 
but childishly vain, and, on that side, as easy to wound as to win. I very 
gladly took refuge from the tedium of the crowd in conversation with a man 
of so original a character. I sat down by him on a bench in the tea-room, 
and got him to tell me of all the glories of his ancient heritage, all the bat- 
tles of his forefathers, and his own travels and adventures. The worthy 
man described to me at great length his Highland dress, to which he evi- 
dently attached immense importance ; and told me a long history of the ef- 
fect his appearance in it had produced on the Court of Berlin. There was 
doubtless enough to excite a smile in his account of the astonishment of the 
King and Queen, and of the signal attentions his striking dress commanded ; 
yet there was a tire and a simplicity in his manner of relating the triumphs 
of his national costume, that touched me extremely. 

February llth. 

This morning I went to church, with a full indention of being pious ; 
but it did not succeed. Everything was too cold, dry, and unsesthetic. I 
am an advocate for a more imaginative worship, though it be addressed 
rather more to the senses. If we did but follow Nature, we should find 
her the best instructress in religion, as in other things. Is it not by her 
most magnificent and sublime spectacles that she awakens our hearts to 
emotions of piety 1 by the painting of her sunsets, by the music of the 
rolling deep, by the forms of her mountains and her rocks ? Be hot wiser, 
my brethren, than him who created all these wonders, and formed the hu- 
man heart to feel them ; but imitate him, according to the measure of your 
feeble powers. 

But on this matter I should preach to deaf ears, except to yours, dear 
Julia; they have long listened, with me, to the heavenly song of the 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 113 

spheres, which ceaselessly resounds in the eternal, beautiful creation, if men 
did not stop their ears with the cotton of positive dogmas and traditions, 
through which they cannot hear it.* 

The sermon too which I heard, though prepared beforehand, and read, 
was stony and unprofitable. Preachers would do much more good if they 
would lay aside the old mechanical custom of taking texts only out of the 
Bible, and take them from local life and circumstances, and from human so- 
ciety as it now exists ; if they would rather seek to foster the in-dwelling 
poetical religion, than the mere spirit of dogma ; if they would treat moral- 
ity not only as the Commanded, but as the Beautiful and the Useful, — the 
Necessary, indeed, to the happiness of the individual, and of society. If 
more pains were taken to instruct the working-man from the pulpit, — to 
form him to think instead of to believe, — crime would soon become less fre- 
quent; he would begin to feel a real interest in what he heard, — a positive 
want of the church and of the sermon, for his own guidance and informa- 
tion : whereas he now attends them mechanically and without reflection, or 
from some motives equally unprofitable. The laws of the land, too, and not 
the Ten Commandments alone, should be declared and expounded to the 
people from the pulpit ; — they should be made perfectly conversant with 
them, and with the grounds of them ; for, to use the words of Christ, how 
many sin without knowing what they do !t 

The best practical receipt for a universal morality is, without doubt, to 
ask oneself whether an action, or course of action, if adopted by every man, 
would be useful or injurious to society. In the first case, it is of course good, 
— in the second, bad. Had Governments, and those upon whom devolves 
the sacred and neglected duty of instructing the people, habituated them to 
the constant application of this test or measure of conduct, and then demon- 
strated to them, directly, ' ad oculos,' the inevitable, ultimate reaction of 
evil conduct on themselves, they would, in the course of a few years, have 
improved not only the morality of the country, but its physical condition 
and commercial prosperity : whereas the ordinary priestly wisdom, which 
sets faith, authority, and dogma above everything, has left mankind in the 
same state for centuries, — if indeed it have not made them worse. 

It would, perhaps, do'no harm occasionally to choose teachers who have 
been converted to virtue by experience of the evil consequences of vice (as, 
for instance, the late Werner,) and who are therefore best informed on the 
subject. Not only is there more joy in heaven over one sinner that repent- 

• My departed friend was possessed with a sort of fixed idea that a new Church 
was at hand. What a pity that he did not live to witness what is now forming ! I 
have just read the following consolatory announcement in the Mlgemeine Zeitung: — 

"To the Unknown. 

*' In these pages, hard words have, as I hear, been applied to me and to the new 
Church. Strike, my friends, but hear. Only one word, to warn you of the sin. Again 
I say, it draws near, raising up the veil more and more, — a glory which the tongue of 
man cannot express, and the spirit of man can only faintly imagine. If we can scarce- 
ly conceive that all will become new, how can we so suddenly conceive a new All? 
But to fall violently on the vanguard, and to insult the banner, before we know the 
hosts which are approaching, and the mighty men who lead them, is not advisable. 
Beloved brethren, how were it with you, if, with scoffing still on your lips, you recog- 
nized Him ? He comes in an hour when ye think not." — Editob. 

f In this case it were, indeed, desirable that our laws should be brought nearer to 
the comprehension of the people ; that instead of a hundred different provincial and 
local laws, we had one code for the whole monarchy ; so that an act should not be le- 
gal in one village, which ten miles off is illegal ; in short, that the P Jurists should 

at length become workers in bronze, and not tinkers— Epitor. 

15 



114 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

cth than over ninety-and-nine just men, but such a man is more firm in his 
convictions and perceptions, and generally more zealous in reclaiming others, 
as the exrmples of many holy men prove. 

Above all, in every well-organized society all clergymen, be they of what 
persuasion they may, must, in my opinion, be paid by fixed salary, and not 
be permitted to take money for every separate consolation of real, or cere- 
mony of conventional, religion ; — a meanness which necessarily destroys 
all true reverence for the priest, and which must degrade him in his own 
eyes, if he have any delicacy. It is really dreadful to see the poor man stick 
his two groschen behind the altar for the holy elements he has just receiv- 
ed; or crowd a fee into the reverend gentleman's hand when his child is 
christened, just as if he were giving him a shilling to drink. But when we 
hear the parson storm and scold from the pulpit, because his offerings and 
tithes decrease ; when we hear him announce such a falling-off in his reve- 
nues as a proof of the decline of religion ; then, indeed, we feel distinctly 
why there are so many parsons, and what they themselves regard as their 
true and proper vocation. Soldiers natura'ly love war, and in like manner 
priests love religion,' — for their own advantage. But patriots love war only 
as a means of obtaining freedom; and philosophers, religion only for its 
beauty and its truth. 

That is the difference. — But, as the author of the Zillah so truly says, 
"Establishments endure longer than opinions; the church outlasts the faith 
which founded it; and if a priesthood has once succeeded in interweaving 
itself with the institutions of the country, it may continue to subsist and to 
flourish long after its forms of worship is regarded with aversion and con- 
tempt." 

The afternoon was more satisfactory. — I climbed the hills around the 
town, and at last crept up to the top of a windmill in order to see the whole 
panorama of Brighton. The wind turned the sails of the mill with such 
force that the whole building rocked like a ship. The miller's lad, who 
had shown me the way up, went to a flourbin and took out a telescope. 
Spite of its soft bed, it was unhappily broken. I was however well satis- 
fied with the general view, enlivened as it was by hundreds of fishing-boats 
which seemed struggling with the storm, and hastened back with the sink- 
ing sun to my social duties. 

The party at Count F 's was small but interesting ; it was rendered 

so in the first place by the host himself; then by a lady celebrated for her 
beauty; and lastly, by a former well-known leader of 'ton' in Paris. In 
his youth he played a considerable part there, and was at the same time 
constantly implicated in political affairs. He now passes a great part of the 
year in England, probably still not without political views. He is one of 
that sort of men, daily becoming more rare, who live in great style, one 
knows not how ; contrive to acquire a sort of authority everywhere, one 
knows not why ; and under whom one always expects to find something 

mysterious, one knows not wherefore. — is very agreeable, at least 

when he chooses : he narrates admirably, and has forgotten nothing of his 
eventful life which can give zest to his conversation. For adventurers of 
this high order, whose consummate knowledge of the world affords conti- 
nual matter for admiration, (though generally employed only to make dupes,) 
the French character is better suited than any other. Their agreeableness 
in society smooths their way; and their not over warm hearts and oecono- 
mical understandings, (if I may use the expression,) admirably enable them 
to keep all the ground they have won, and to maintain a firm footing on it 
for ever. 

The clever man of whom I am now speaking plays also very agreeably ; 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 115 

and jestingly declares, like Fox, that after the pleasure of winning, he knows 
no greater than that of losing. 

We talked a great deal about Napoleon, of whom our host, like all who 
lived long in immediate intercourse with him, could not speak without vene- 
ration. He mentioned a circumstance which struck me. The Emperor, he 
said, was so incredibly exhausted by the violent excitement of the Hundred 
Days and the events that succeeded them, that on his retreat from Waterloo, 
in the early part of which he was protected by a batallion of his • Garde,' 
he proceeded very slowly, and without any precipitation (quite contrary to 
our version of the affair.) Two or three times he fell asleep on his horse; 

and would have fallen off, had not Count F himself held him on. But 

the Count declared that, except by this complete corporeal exhaustion, he 
never exhibited the slightest mark of internal agitation. 

February 14th. 

My original friend, the Scot — who, I am told, has killed two or three men 
in duels — visited me this morning, and brought me his genealogy, printed, 
with the whole history of his race or ' clan.' He complained bitterly that 
another man of his name contested the rank of chieftain with him; and took 
great pains to prove to me, from the work he had brought, that he was the 
true one : he added, that " the judgment of Heaven between them would be 
the best way of deciding their respective claims." He then called my at- 
tention to his arms, of the origin of which he related a curious history. 



It was, like most of these traditions, poetical enough, and a striking picture 
of those rude but vigorous ages. I did not fail to relate to him a ' pendant' 
to his story, from the Nibelungenlied, concerning my own ancestors ; — pro- 
bably both were equally true. We parted over the ghosts of our forefathers, 
the best friends in the world. 

There are now private balls every evening: and in rooms to which a re- 
spectable German citizen would not venture to invite twelve people, some 
hundreds are here packed like negro slaves. It is even worse than in Lon- 
don ; and the space allotted to the quadrilles allows only the mathematical 
possibility of making something like dancing demonstrations. A ball with- 
out this crowd would be despised; and a visitor of any fashion who* found 
the staircase empty, would probably drive away from the door. This strange 
taste reminded me of one of Potier's characters, a 'ci-devant jeune homme' 
who orders a pair of pantaloons of his tailor which are to be ' extraordinaire- 
ment collant:' as the 'artiste' is going away he calls after him, "Entendez 
vous ? — extraordinairement collant ; si j'y entre, je ne le prends pas." In 
like manner an English dandy would say of a rout, " Si j'y entre, je n'y 
vais pas." 

When you are once in, however, I must confess that nowhere do you see a 
greater number of pretty girls, against whom you are squeezed ' bongre mal- 
gre,' than here. Some of them have been educated for a year or two in 
France, and are distinguished for a better ' tournure' and style of dress: 
many of them speak German. A man may have as many invitations to 
4 soirees' of this sort as he likes ; but he may go away as perfect a stranger 
as if he had been uninvited; for if he does not stay long, he does not so much 
as see the hostess, and certainly she does not know half the people present. 
At one o'clock a very ' recherche' cold supper is served, with 'force cham- 
pagne.' The supper-room is usually on the ground-floor, and the table of 
course cannot contain above twenty persons at a time, so that the company 
go down in troops, and meet, pushing and elbowing, on the narrow stair- 



116 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

case. If you succeed in getting a seat, you may rest a little ; and many 
avail themselves of this privilege with small regard to their successors : little 
attention is paid to giving place to the ladies. On the other hand, the ser- 
vants are very active in continually replacing the dishes and bottles, as fast 
as they are emptied, on the side of the table to which the guests have no 
access. 

In order to see the whole of the thing, I stayed till four in the morning 
in one of the best houses, and found the end of the fete, after three-fourths 
of the company were gone, the most agreeable ; the more so as the daugh- 
ters of the house were remarkably pretty amiable girls. There were some 
famous originals, however, at the ball ; among others, a fat lady of at least 
fifty-five, dressed in black velvet with white trimmings, and a turban with 
floating ostrich feathers, who waltzed like a Bacchante whenever she could 
find room. Her very pretty daughters tried in vain to rival their mamma. 
My curiosity being excited by such a display o( Herculean vigour and per- 
tinacity, I found the lady's large fortune had been made by speculations in 
cattle. The music, in most of these balls was extremely meagre and bad. 
The musicians, however, contrive to produce such a noise with such instru- 
ments as they have, that you cannot hear yourself speak, near them. 

February 16th. 

I read yesterday that " strong passions are increased by distance." Mine 
for you must be very strong then — though indeed tender friendship is ever 
the surest of any — for I love you better than ever : — but this is intelligible 
enough. If we truly love a person, we have, when absent from him, only 
his good and agreeable qualities before our eyes ; the unpleasant little de- 
fects which exist in every man, and which, however trifling they may be, 
annoy us when present, vanish from our recollection,' — and thus love natu- 
rally increases in absence. And you — what do you think on this subject? 
How many more faults have you to cover with the mantle of Christian love 
in me ! 

I am going to London to-morrow, expressly to deliver this letter to our 
ambassador with my own hands, since the last was delayed so long. Prob- 
ably it fell into the hands of the curious, for we shall not soon get rid of the 
' infamie' of opening letters. In two days I shall return, and shall be hap- 
py enough to miss three or four balls in the interval. — I took a long walk 
this morning, and this time not entirely alone, but with one of the many 
agreeable girls I have met with here. When young unmarried women are 
once ' lancees' in the world, they enjoy more rational freedom in England 
than in any other country in Europe. The young lady ' quaestionis' was 
just seventeen, and polished in Paris. 

On my return home I found, to my no small astonishment, a letter from 
the luckless R , who has been again driven back to Harwich, and de- 
spairingly implores money and help. Contrary to my desire, as I now 
learn for the first time, he did not go by Calais. These wanderings of the 
Garden-Odysseus are as ludicrous as they are disagreeable, and you will 
doubtless think the adventurer ' malsrre lui' is eaten by the fishes, till you 
have ocular proof of the contrary. I recollect that twelve years ago, about 
this same season, I was going to embark for Hamburg, from which I was 
fortunately dissuaded by my old French valet. He said, with rather an odd 
turn of expression ; " Dans ces terns ci, il y a toujours quelques equinoxes 
dangereuses, qui peuvent devenir funestes." He was right ; the vessel was 
wrecked, and several lives lost. 

London, Feb. 18th. 

Honour to Mr. Temple ! — Your letter, which he forwarded, reached me 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 117 

in ten days, while those which come through our diplomacy are three weeks 
on the road. Give him my best thanks. I laughed heartily at the news 

H sends me so humourously. The little Criminal-rath (' conseiller 

criminel') whom the jester calls ' le Rat criminel ; the ' Renvoye extraordi- 
naire,' and the ' Diplomate a la fourchette,' are admirably painted ; so is 
The Fortunate house- court- state- and body-servant. Don't wonder at his 
success : it is indisputable that there is a sort of narrowness which almost 
always succeeds in the world ; and a character of mind which never suc- 
ceeds. Mine is of this latter sort — a fantastic picture-making mind, that 
fashions its own dream-world anew every day, and thence remains for ever 
a stranger in the actual world. You tell me that if Fortune had offered her- 
self to me, I should have slighted her, or at most, playfully taken her by 
the finger, instead of clutching her earnestly ; — that I never valued the pre- 
sent till it stood as a picture in the far distance ; — that then indeed it was 
often a picture of repentance and regret; the future, a picture of longing 
and aspiration ; the present, never anything but a misty spot. ' A merveille.' 
You say all this most charmingly ; and I must acknowledge that nobody 
understands better how to moralize impressively than you. — If it were but 
of any use to me ! But tell me, — if you could convince the lame man that 
it were far better for him not to be lame ; — as soon as the poor wretch tries 
to set one foot before the other, does he limp the less ? ' Naturam expellas 
furca,' &c. Vainly do you desire your stomach to digest better, your wit 
to be sharper, your reason to be more efficient : — things go on in their old 
train, with a few mod ideations. 

The decisions of the Ministers on the S affair, which you commu- 
nicate to me, also remain after the old sort, in spite of the extreme polite- 
ness of those gentlemen. Is it not strange, however, that our inferior func- 
tionaries distinguish themselves as much by their ' tracasseries,' and by 
their ill-bred, and I might say contemptuous style, as the higher do (with 
a single exception) by their care in using none but the most refined and 
polished forms ? Do not these on this very account wear the appearance of 
the bitterest irony ? You may give this as a subject for a prize-essay to our 
G dilettante academy. 

' A propos,' — who is that very wise Minister of whom II speaks ? 

Ah ha ! I guess — but all Ministers are now-a-days so wise 'ex officio,' that 
it is difficult to know which he means. The other, however, I guessed in- 
stantly' — as well as the pure horizontal individual, whose illness grieves me 
heartily ; for when he is well, he stands, in my opinion, most singularly 
perpendicular, towering above disfavour or envy, by the dignity of his cha- 
racter, and by his experience and talents for business. There are, to be 
sure, some official persons in our country whom one might fairly ask, with 
Burger's Lenore, every time one sees them, " Bist lebend, Liebster, oder 
todt?"* 

Heaven preserve us both in better health of body and mind ! And, above 
all, may it preserve to me your tender friendship, the most essential ele- 
ment of my well-being ! 

Your faithful L . 



LETTER XIII. 

Brighton, Feb. 19th, 1827. 
Dear Julia, 

* To make the best of my time,' (as the practical English say,) before I 
left town yesterday I visited three theatres in succession. In the first piece 

* ' Art living, dearest, or dead?' 



118 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

I saw, the principal person was an Irish servant. According to all I have 
been able to learn from plays and novels, these Irish must be an odd people, 
i — of a fresh originality very unlike the English. Irish beggars are very 
common in the streets of London, where they are easily recognized by their 
Gascon-like manner and dialect. A modern author remarks with equal 
drollery and truth : " The English beggar whines out the same monotonous 
words in a drawling tone, ' Give a poor man a halfpenny, Give a poor man 
a halfpenny.' — Whit an orator is his Irish colleague ! ' O your honour, give 
us a penny, only one blessed penny, your honour's honour, and God's 
blessing be upon your children, and your children's children ! Give us only 
one little penny, and may Heaven grant you a long life, and a quiet death, 
and a blessed resurrection !' " Who can withstand entreaties so humorously 



moving 



In the next theatre we were regaled with a pantomime, in which was a 
quadrille of birds, and another of tea-things ; after which the tea-pot, milk- 
jug, and cup, executed a ' pas de trois,' while spoons, knives, and forks 
danced around them as ' figurantes.' The birds were « a s'y meprendre,' 
and I recommend something of the same kind, with parrots which might 

speak too, to be arranged for the S Court theatre by Mephistophiles. 

A clever account of it would be a still further novelty, and a tea-kettle and 
accompaniments would be very suitable additions to the society. 

I saw the Indian jugglers for the third time. They exhibited something 
quite new. Instead of balls, they threw up and caught short burning 
torches. This produces a curious sort of fire-work, a continuous devclope- 
ment of burning figures, — wheels, serpents, triangles, stars, flowers, &c, 
as if in a kaleidescope. The immovable steadiness and accuracy of these 
people never misses. 

The fantastic absurdities of the pantomimes probably affected my imagi- 
nation in the night, which 1 dosed away between London and Brighton ; for 
I had the strangest visions in my carriage. At first I was mounted on my 
beautiful gray, whom for once I could not manage : he constantly resisted 
my will ; and when at last I mastered him, shook his head with such fury, 
that it broke from his neck and flew to a distance of twenty paces, while I 
plunged down a precipice on the headless body. — I was next sitting on a 
bench in my park, and watching the devastations made by a frightful hurri- 
cane, which tore up the old trees far and near, and threw them together like 
faggots.— -At last I quarrelled with you, dear Julia, and in despair went for 
a soldier. I forgot you (which is possible only in sleep,) and found myself 
in my new sphere, once more young and brilliant, full of fresh spirit, and 
not less full of wanton pride. It was the day of battle. The thunder of 
the cannon rolled magnificently ; noble martial music accompanied it, and 
animated our spirits ; while, with the prerogative of a dream, we sat quietly 
breakfasting on a ' pate aux truffes et champagne,' in the midst of a fire of 
musketry. A spent cannon ball now came ' en ricochet' towards us ; and 
before I could spring aside, carried off the head of my comrade, who was 
sitting on the ground by my side, and both my legs, so that I fell groaning 
with pain and horror. When I recovered my senses, the storm was roar- 
ing around me, and the sea howled in my ears. I thought myself on the 
voyage, when, behold my carriage stopped at the door of the inn on the 
Marine Parade at Brighton ! To-morrow perhaps I shall dream out the rest. 
But are the waking fancies of life much less confused? Castles in the air, 
for good and for evil ;— nothing but castles in the air. Some stand for mi- 
nutes, some for years, some for tens* of years ; but they all fall at last, and 

* Jahrzehendt, Jahrhunderte, Jahrtausende, from Jahre. Corresponding to these con- 
venient forms, we have only centuries. It is to be remarked, loo, that each has its ad- 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 119 

palace, just as easily as a miserable hut, a grave or a dungeon. But you are 
ever by, my Julia, either sharing the palace, adorning the hut, weeping over 
the grave, or consoling me in bonds. At this moment I am floating midway, 
without any determinate abode: I am, however, all the more ethereal and 
light-hearted for that; but, I must confess, with a very sleepy 'physique,' 
for it is three in the morning: and so I kiss your hand, and bid you good- 
night. But I beg you to look in your dream-book what these adventures of 
mine portend. 

You know my favourite superstition, which I set too high a value upon to 
have it torn from me by chafly reasonings. As, for instance, when an ' es- 
prit fort' shrugs up his shoulder, (if he does not venture to turn up his nose 
in my face,) or a well-anointed priest says, " It is extraordinary to see how 
inconsistently many men refuse to believe in religion, (by which parsons 
always mean their Church and its ordinances,) and yet give way to the ut- 
most credulity in the greatest absurdities." " But, reverend Sir," I ask in 
reply, " in what then do these absurdities consist?" " Why, the belief in 
sympathies, in dreams, in the influence of the stars, and so on." " But, 
most respected Sir, I see no inconsistency in the matter. Every reflecting 
man must confess that there are a number of mysterious powers in nature,— 
influences, and attractions, both of our earth, and of the system to which 
it belongs, of which many that formerly passed for fables have been dis- 
covered ; others that as yet we do but suspect or divine, and cannot ascer- 
tain. It is therefore by no means contrary to reason to make one's own hy- 
pothesis concerning them, and to believe in these more or less. I do not, 
therefore, contest your miracles, nor your symbols ; — I contest only certain 
other things, which many of you teach, and which are equally incompre- 
hensible to the understanding and repugnant to the heart: for instance, a 
God more passionate and partial than the frailest man ; infinite torments ap- 
pointed by infinite love, for finite sins; arbitrarily-predestined forgiveness or 
damnation, — and so on. Such things can be possible only when two and 
two shall make five, and no superstition can approach the insanity of such 
a belief." 

February 22nd. 

I am just returned from a grand Almack's fancy ball, where everybody 
was either in some fantastic outlandish dress, or in uniform, — a ' melange' 
which does not seem to me in very good taste, nor very respectful to the 
latter. You may imagine that my friend the Highland chieftain did not fail 
to appear in his national costume. It is really very handsome ; in the high- 
est degree rich, picturesque, and manly : the only thing that does not please 
me is the shoes with the large buckles. The sword is just in the form of 
one of our student's rapiers ; and besides that, there is a dagger, pistols, and 
cartouche-box. The arms are set with precious stones ; and an eagle's fea- 
ther, the badge of a chieftain, adorns the cap. 

I escorted two ladies to the ball, — the one a good-natured and sensible 
woman, still very pretty at five-and-thirty, who likes the world and is liked 
by it, and nurses an invalid husband with the most unremitting care. Her 
4 tournure' is agreeable, her disposition kind and good, — so that she is just 
the person ' pour en faire une amie dans le monde.' The other lady, her 
intimate friend, is a young and very pretty widow ; not a very considerable 
only seem realities. Nobody can furnish a greater abundance of plans to archi- 
tects of such castles than I. On the slightest inducement I can build a fairy 

jectival and adverbial form. The poverty of the English, and still more of the French 
language makes it impossible to translate adequately into them from the German. — 
Thastsl. 



120 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

person, but a good-tempered friendly little creature, who is perfectly con- 
tented if you tell her that her teeth are pearls and her eyes violets. 

I had no reason to be ashamed of my ladies, either as to person or dress; 

but they, and all present, were eclipsed by the youthful Miss . She is 

really one of the most beautiful girls I have seen, — a little sylph, — who 
must have stolen her exquisite foot and her graces from another land. She 
is only sixteen, — wild, and mobile as quicksilver; unwearied in dancing as 
in frolic. I was so fortunate as to gain her good graces to-day by a lucky 
offering. This consisted in a ' cornet' of remarkably well-made ' bonbon' 
crackers, in the distribution of which she had found infinite diversion at the 
last ball. This indecorum had been strongly reprobated by the mammas ; 
so that there were no more to be had at supper, as heretofore. I had provi- 
dentially laid in a stock at the confectioner's, and now presented them to her 
unexpectedly ; and I doubt whether the gift of a million of money would 
give poor me half the pleasure I now bestowed by such a trifle. The little 
thing was in an ecstacy of delight, and immediately prepared her batteries, 
which were the more successful, as the enemy thought themselves secure. 
At every explosion she laughed as if she would kill herself; and every time 
I met her she smiled upon me vyith her sparkling eyes, as sweetly as a lit- 
tle angel. Poor child ! this perfect innocence, this overflow of happiness 
and joy, touched me deeply — for, alas! she will soon, like all the rest, be 
undeceived. 

There were many other very pretty young women ; but they were too 
' dressees ; some were loaded with jewels and trinkets, but none were com- 
parable to this girl. 

February 24th. 

I spent this evening at Mrs. F 's, a very dignified and delightful wo" 

man, formerly, as it is affirmed, married to the King. She is now without 
influence in that- region, but still universally beloved and respected, — ' d'un 
excellent ton et sans pretension.' I there heard some interesting details 
concerning Lord Liverpool : a man who, an hour before, 'ruled half a world 
with energy and sagacity, becomes an 'imbecile' from the neglect to open a 
vein ! His predecessor, Lord Castlereagh, from the same cause commits 
suicide ! — On how frail a tenure hangs the human intellect ! 

In this house one sees only ' beau monde.' Indeed there is not much of 
the very emptiest, the exclusive society here ; or they live completely re- 
tired, that they may not come into collision with the persons they call ' No- 
bodies,' whom they shun with greater horror than Brahmins shun Parias. 
Though my station and connexions allow me to enter the sanctuary, I do 
not on that account disdain the world without. As a foreigner, and still 
more as an independent man, I take the liberty to seek enjoyment wherever 
I can find it, unfettered by such restrictions, — nor do I always find the most 
in the highest places. Even the vulgar and laughable ' singerie' of the ' par- 
venus' is sometimes extremely amusing, and has a much more burlesque 
character in England than in any other country ; since wealth, establish- 
ment, and luxury, — in a word, all their ' entourage,' — are essentially the 
same as those of the great and high-bred ; only the persons wander among 
them as if stripped bare. 

Here occurred a long pause in my correspondence. Pardon, — I was eat- 
ing my solitary dinner; a snipe stood before me, a ' mouton qui reve' by 
my side. You guess who is the latter. Don't be distressed about the place 
on the left, for on the right is a blazing fire, and I know how much you fear 
that. 

I shall spend the evening again at Count F 's, who is of the Brahmin 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 121 

class. Havel described him to you? He is no insignificant person. Uniting 
French agreeableness with English solidity, he speaks both languages with 
nearly equal ease and fluency. Though no longer young, he is still a hand- 
some man, and his external appearance is rendered more striking by a very 
noble, dignified air. Simple, and thoroughly polite, cheerful without sar- 
casm or malignity, his conversation amuses and satisfies, even when it is not 
brilliant at the moment. His wife is neither remarkable for beauty nor the 
contrary. She has sense, ' l'usage du grand monde, et quelque fois de la 
politesse ;' no inconsiderable talent for music, and ten-thousand a-year. With 
all these materials, I need not tell you the house is an extremely pleasant 
one. 

February 25lh. 

There is a delightful custom for the men at English balls. After the con- 
clusion of a dance, each takes his partner on his arm, and walks about with 
her till the next begins. Many a man has thus time to conquer his timidity, 
and nothing is wanting but our large and numerous rooms to make it more 
agreeable. Here there is no wider field to expatiate in than down the stairs 
to the eating-room, and up again ; still many a gentle word may be whispered 
in the crowd, for nobody heeds what his neighbour does. 

As I am tormented on all sides to dance, (a German who does not waltz 
appears incomprehensible here,) and do not like it, I have given out that I 
am restrained by a vow, and leave it to be inferred that it is a tender one. 
The ladies do not know how to reconcile this with the persuasion that I 
came here in search of a wife, which they stoutly maintain. Thank Hea- 
ven ! I find my tranquillity quite undisturbed. * 

A poor Englishman here is in much worse plight. He threw himself off the 
pier to-day, being, as the English say, 'crossed in love,' and only yesterday 
he was dancing as if stung by a tarantula. The poor fellow must have been 
like the turkeys that are made to dance ballets in Paris by being set on a metal 
plate, under which a fire is lighted. The spectator who sees their convul- 
sive bounds, thinks they are very merry, while the poor things are burning 
by inches. 

I have often complained that Brighton has no vegetation ; but the sunsets 
in the sea, and the cloud-pictures by which they are accompanied, exceed all 
I ever beheld in variety. To-day it had rained all day, and in the evening, 
when it cleared up, a dark range of mountains formed itself above the watery 
mirror, gradually acquiring a firmer consistency as the sun reached the highest 
peak, and broke through the black masses as if with clefts of flaming gold; 
I thought I saw Vesuvius again, streaming with lava. After I had attended 
this magnificent ' coucher' of the monarch of the heavens till its last moment, 
I wandered about the bare downs till it was perfectly dark, scouring hill and 
dale on my swift steed. Probably he too had pictures in his fancy which 
urged him to greater speed, — enticing visions of oats and hay. 

March 14th* 

These everlasting balls, concerts, dinners, and promenades, I cannot call 
exactly tedious, but time-killing. Meanwhile a poor dying man has taken 
up his abode in my house; and his groans and complaints, which all night 
long reach me through the thin walls, form too sharp and melancholy a con- 
trast with this abode of frivolity and dissipation. I can do nothing for him, 
so I shall leave the house to-morrow for London. 

I have received both your letters, and am heartily grieved to hear that both 

* The account of the intermediate days has been suppressed. — Editor. 

16 



122 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

cook and doctor are wanting at your baths. You must do everything you 
can to get both these important chemists, (destined by Nature to play into 
each other's hands,) as soon as possible, and of the best quality. 

You know that a celebrated French physician, the first time he was call-' 
ed into a house, always began by running into the kitchen, embracing the 
cook, and thanking him for a new patient. 

When Louis the Fourteenth grew worse aid worse, and, distrusting his 
own physicians, consulted our Esculapius, the latter made representations to 
the first ' homme de bonne bouche' that he should provide fewer and simpler 
dishes for the King. "Allons done, Monsieur," replied the heroic cook, 
embracing the physician, " mon metier est de faire manger la Roi, le votre 
de lui en oter les suites. Faisons chacun le notre." 

Before I left Brighton I was forced to be present at a musical ' soiree,' one 
of the severest trials to which foreigners in England are exposed. Every 
mother who has grown-up daughters, for whom she has had to pay large 
sums to the music-master, chooses to enjoy the satisfaction of Having the 
youthful ' talent' admired. There is nothing therefore but quavering and 
strumming right and left, so that one is really overpowered and unhappy : 
and even if an Englishwomen has the power of singing, she has scarcely 
ever either science or manner. The men are much more agreeable ' deletanti,' 
for they, at least, give one the diversion of a comical farce. That a man 
should advance to the piano-forte with far greater confidence than a David, 
strike with his forefinger the note he thinks his song should begin with, and 
then 'entonner,' like a thunder-clap, (generally a note or two lower than the 
pitch,) and sing through a long 'aria' without rest or pause, and without ac- 
companiment of any sort, except the most wonderful distortions of the face, 
— is a thing one must have seen to believe it possible, especially in the pre- 
sence of at least fifty people. Sometimes the thing is heightened by their 
making choice of Italian songs ; and, in their total ignorance of the language, 
roaring out words, which, if they were understood by the ladies, would force 
them to leave the room. It did not appear to me that people constrained 
themselves much in laughing on these occasions: but some vocalists are far 
too well established in their own opinion to be disturbed by that; — once 
let loose upon society, they are extremely hard to call off again. 

London, Feb. 17th. 

I am once more in Albemarle Street, and after my long absence I yester- 
day paid no fewer than twenty-two visits ; dined at a Club dinner;* went 
to a ball at the house of the above-mentioned fair Napoleonist, and closed 
the day with a ' soiree' at Mrs. Hope's, a very fashionable and pretty wo- 
man, wife of the author of Anastasius. 

To-day I visited ' in another quarter' two Chinese ladies who also receive 
company here, and in a very original style too, — only one must pay one's 
4 entree.' Even from the very staircase everything is arranged as if in China 
itself; and when you enter, and see the ladies reclining, with outstretched 
feet five inches in length, under an illumination of paper lanterns, you may 
almost fancy yourself in Canton. They claim to be of high descent, — to 
which their feet bear witness ; for the lower classes, of course, have not 
this distinguishing mark. The small-footed women have so little centri- 
pedal power, that they can hardly totter from one ottoman to another with- 
out a stick. 

I am a passionate admirer of small feet in women ; but these are too 
small, and horrible to behold naked : the toes, doubled under from infancy, 

* A note explanatory of this word is omitted, as unnecessary in England — Trans. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 123 

are literally grown into the sole. This practice is nearly as absurd as the 
stays of our ladies, though perhaps not quite so injurious to the health. 

I bought a new pair of shoes of these princesses, which I made them try 
on before my eyes. I send them to you, together with several other Chi- 
nesiana, silk hangings, pictures, &c. ; among others, portraits of the Em- 
peror and Empress. The good creatures seem to me, spite of their quali- 
ty, to have brought a complete warehouse with them, for the moment a 
thing is sold it is replaced by another. Though they have been for some 
time in England, they have not learned a single word of English. Their 
own language appeared to me very heavy and dragging ; and their faces 
were, to a European taste, more than ugly. 

February 18th. 

The Italian Opera has commenced,— the only theatre 'du bel air,' except 
the French Play. As people cannot appear there but ' en toilette,' even in 
the pit, the effect is very brilliant. The opera however was bad, orchestra 
as well as singers, and the ballet likewise. The lighting of the theatre is 
better adapted for being seen than for seeing : in front of every box hangs 
a chandelier, which dazzles one very offensively, and throws the actors into 
the shade. The opera lasts till one o'clock, so that you have ample time 
to visit it without giving up other engagements. The ' trouble' has now 
begun in good earnest ; one seldom gets home before three or four o'clock 
in the morning : and a man who chooses to be very ' repandu' — which the 
exclusives indeed do not, but which is amusing to a foreigner — may very 
well accept a dozen invitations for every evening. 

The great world is consequently not alive before two o'clock in the after- 
noon. The Park hours are from four till six, when the ladies drive about 
by thousands in their elegant equipages and morning dresses, and the gen- 
tlemen on their beautiful horses ' voltigent' about from flower to flower, dis- 
playing all the grace Heaven has bestowed upon them. Almost all Eng- 
lishmen, however, look well on horseback, and ride better and more natu- 
rally than 'Our riding-masters, who certainly understand admirably, when 
they are on a horse trained to every sort of pace and speed, how to sit like 
a clothes-peg on a linen-line. 

The green turf of the Park swarms with riders, who can ride faster there 
than in the 'corso.' Among them are many ladies, who manage their horses 
as skilfully and steadily as the men. 

But Miss Sally is now led out before my door, and snorts impatiently on 
the macadamized pavement. My letter is long enough : — a thousand greet- 
ings to all who are good enough to remember me, and the most affection- 
ate farewell to you ! 

Your friend L . 



LETTER XIV. 

London, March 25th. 
Dearest and best. 

It would be too tiresome if I sent you a daily list of the parties I go to : 
I shall only mention them when anything strikes me as remarkable ; and 
perhaps hereafter, if I feel the inclination and the power, I shall give you 
a general ' appercu' of the whole. . The technical part of social life — the 
arrangements for physical comfort and entertainment — is well understood 
here. The most distinguished specimen of this is the house of the Duke 
of D , a king of fashion and elegance. 



124 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Very few persons of rank have what we, on the Continent, call a palace, 
in London. Their palaces, their luxury and their grandeur, are to he seen 

in the country. The Duke of D is an exception ; — his palace in 

town displays great taste and richness, and a numerous collection of works 
of art. The company is always the most select ; and though here, as every- 
where, too numerous, is rendered less oppressive by the number of rooms : 

still it is too much like a crowd at a fair. The concerts at D House, 

particularly, are very fine entertainments, where only the very first talent to 
be found in the metropolis is engaged, and where perfect order combined 
with boundless profusion reigns throughout. Among other things, the ar- 
rangement of the suppers and 'buffets,' which are excellent in such crowded 
parties, is most recommendable. In a separate room is a long table, with 
the most delicate and choice refreshments of every kind, so placed that it is 
accessible to the guests only on one side. Behind it stand maid-servants, in a 
uniform of white gowns and black aprons, who give everybody what he 
asks for, and have room enough to do their ministering conveniently : be- 
hind them is a door communicating with the 'offices,' through which every- 
thing needful is handed to them without disturbance to the company; — the 
disagreeable procession of troops of men-servants balancing great trays and 
pushing about the 'salons' with them, always in danger of discharging their 
contents, cold or warm, into the laps or pockets of the company, is thus 
avoided. 

The supper is served at a later hour, by male attendants, in another room, 
which communicates with the kitchen. The waiting is far better, with much 
fewer people, than on the Continent, and accomplished without the least 
confusion. 

I must observe, by the by, as to ' bonne chere,' that the very best in the 
world is to be found at the first tables in London : they have the best French 
cooks and the best Italian confectioners, for the very simple reason that they 
pay them best. I am told there are cooks who receive twelve hundred a 
year here ; — to merit, its crown ! 

Sometimes, after concert and supper, at two in the morning dancing 
begins, and one drives home by sunlight. This suits me admirably, for you 
know I always had the taste of Minerva's bird. In such a night-morning I 
often enjoy a drive in the Park ; for, thank heaven ! Spring is visibly coming, 
and the tender green of the young leaves and the pink almond blossoms 
peep forth over the garden-walls and amid the dark net-work of the swelling 
branches. 

March 26th. 

I devoted this morning to an excursion to Deptford, to see Captain Par- 
ry's ship, the Hecla, which is to sail in a {ew days for the North Pole. 
Whether she will reach it, is another matter: I wish it may not fare with 
Parry as with poor Count Zambeccari, who to this hour is not returned from 
'his last aerial voyage. 

Captain Parry did the honours of his singular vessel with great polite- 
ness ; his air and manner perfectly bespeak the frank, determined, gallant 
seaman he is known to be. Some curiously formed boats, which were like- 
wise to serve as sledges, lay on the deck. The ship herself has double 
sides, filled with cork, to keep in the heat ; she is also warmed by ' con- 
duits de chaleur.' The provisions consist of the strongest extracts; so that 
a whole ox in his quintessence can be put in a man's coat-pocket, like the 
stereotype editions of the ' chefd'eeuvres' of the whole literature of England 
in one volume. All the officers seemed picked men. I found Captain Ross, 
who has accompanied Captain Parry in all his voyages, a very polished and 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 125 

agreeable man. The ship was thronged with visiters, climbing in a conti- 
nual stream up the rope-ladder. It was impossible to look without intense 
interest on a er^w who were going to confront such toils and dangers, in the 
light-hearted and enterprising spirit of their class, solely for the advance- 
ment of science and the satisfaction of a noble curiosity. 

I was invited to dine in barracks by a Major of the Horse Guards. There 
is a most advantageous custom prevalent throughout the English army, — I 
mean the so-called ' Mess.' Each regiment has its common table, to which 
every officer is bound to contribute a certain sum, whether he choose to 
avail himself of it or not. By this he is entitled to the privilege of dining 
at it daily, and of bringing an occasional guest according to some established 
regulations. A committee superintends the economical part. Each officer 
presides at table in turn, from the colonel down to the youngest lieutenant, 
and is invested, so long as he is * en fonction,' with the requisite authority. 
The ' ton' of the officers is excellent; far more.' gentleman-like' than that 
commonly to be found on the Continent; at least so I am bound to conclude 
from this sample. Although the strictest subordination prevails in service, 
yet when that is over, they meet as gentlemen, so entirely on an equality, 
that it were impossible for a stranger to discover from their deportment the 
superior from the subordinate officers. The table was admirably served. 
There was not wanting either an elegant service of plate, or champagne, 
claret, or any of the requisites of luxury. The dinner was followed by no 
excess; and the conversation, though perfectly unconstrained and cheerful, 
was confined within the bounds of decorum and good breeding. To crown 
all, the whole did not last too long; so that I had still time to pay some 
visits at the opera, which is convenient enough for that purpose. 

March 28th. 

In most companies pretty high play is the order of the day, and the ladies 
are the most eager players. The crowding to the ' ecarte' table, which is 
almost out of fashion at Paris, is incessant; and the white arms of the Eng- 
lish beauties appear to great advantage on the table-covers of black velvet 
embroidered with gold. But if their arms are dangerous, their hands are 
still more so, 'car les vieilles surtout trichent impitoyablement.' There are 
some old maids whom one meets in the first society who make a regular 
trade of play, so that they carry off fifty pounds at a stroke without changing 
a feature. They have small parties at their own houses, which are as ' like 
' tripots' as possible. 

In no country can the admirer of ' le moyen age,' ' fair, fat and forty,' 
meet more women in high preservation than in England. Even still more 
mature years do not obliterate all pretensions. 

* # # . * * * * * * 

I closed my day with reading and whist at the Club. My party was 
most curiously composed; — 'the Portuguese Ambassador, who is strikingly 
like Napoleon ; a Neapolitan ex-minister, brought hither by the failure x»f 
the revolution; the Frenchman whom I described to you at Brighton; and 
my German insignificance, who however this time gained the victory ; for 
I won eight rubbers and two ' Monkeys.' What is a ' Monkey?' you ask. 
Fashion has given strange names to the markers. One for twenty-five 
pounds is called a Poney ; and one for fifty, a ' Monkey.' 

April 3rd. 

You are accustomed to follow me from the palace to the cottage, and 
from the decorated room to more beautiful nature. To-day I must introduce 
you to my dentist, the celebrated Mr. Cartwright. This gentleman is said 



126 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

to make ten thousand a year by his profession, and exercises it in the most 
4 grandiose' style. In the first place he goes to no one v , excepting the King: 
every subject, male or female, must wait on him. But this is not all; — 
you must announce yourself a week or fortnight beforehand, and solicit an 
audience : you then receive a card containing the following answer : — 

" Mr. Cartwright will have the pleasure of receiving N N on 

such a day and such an hour." 

You appear at the appointed time, and are ushered into an elegant room, 
where a piano-forte, prints, books and other helps to pass time are placed; 
a very necessary attention, as you often have to wait an hour or more. 

When I entered, I found the Duchess of Montrose and Lady Melville 
and her daughters, who were called away ' gradatim,' so that at length my 
turn came. 

When you have once reached this point, you find indeed infinite reason 
to be satisfied ; for Mr. Cartwright is the most skilful and scientific man of 
his profession I ever met with, — perfectly devoid of all trace of ' charlata- 
nerie,' which the difficulty of access might lead you to anticipate. He has 
also a settled price, and not an exorbitant one, — ' mais c'est un Grand 
Seigneur dentiste.' 

In the evening, after wandering to four or five places in search of some- 
thing interesting, I at last fixed myself at Lady 's where I was riveted 

by the conversation of a Captain , a half German who is just returned 

from the East, and gave a very interesting account of his travels. Among 
other things he told me the following strange anecdotes of Lady Hester 
Stanhope, a neice of Pitt's, who left England many years ago, turned Arab, 
and has established herself in Syria. 

She is now honoured by the Arabs as a prophet, lives with all the state of 
a native princess, and seldom allows Europeans to see her. 

After a great deal of trouble Captain gained access to her. The 

first thing she required was his promise that he would not write anything 
about her. This vow being made, (luckily I am bound by none such,) she 
was cheerful and conversable, and talked with equal ease and cleverness. 
She made it no secret that she had renounced the Christian faith, and at the 
same time that she still looked for the appearing of the true Son of God. 
before whom she was appointed to prepare the way. Hereupon she showed 
the Captain a noble Arab mare, which had a curious bony excrescence 
on the back exactly in the form of a saddle. " This horse," said she, — 

with a look of which Captain declared he was still in doubt whether 

to ascribe to madness or to a desire to hoax him, — " This horse God has 
saddled for his own Son, and wo to the man who shall dare to mount it! 
Under my protection it awaits its true master." 

She afterwards assured him, ' en passant,' that Adam was still living, 
and that she knew perfectly the place of his concealment, but would not 
reveal it. 

The lady of the house listened to his narration, and assured him that Lady 
Hester had been only ' quizzing' him ; for that she had known her well, 
and that never had woman a clearer, more determined, and at the same time 
more astute mind. For a person of such a character, she has made a good 
exchange in renouncing Western for Eastern life. She rules ; she is free 
as bird in air ; while in the centre of civilization she would never have 
been able to subtract herself from the slavery which must ever remain, more 
or less, the dark side of civilized life. 

Jlpril 4th. 
Sir Alexander Johnston, a great Orientalist, but in another sense of the 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 127 

word, invited me to dinner, and seasoned the repast by his intelligent and 
learned conversation. He has effected many important things in his de- 
partment ; but we, dear Julia, are both of us too ignorant on the subject for 
me to attempt to give you an account of them. One thing however will 
interest you. He told me of a cachemir shawl of Tippo Saib's, embroider- 
ed in gold, and silks of all colours, ten ells long and worth a thousand 
pounds — a thing well calculated to set a female imagination on fire. 

April 6th. 

Can you tell me why all objects reflected by art give us only pleasure, 
whereas all realities have at least one defective side 1 We see the. torments 
of Laocoon in marble with undisturbed delight,* while the actual scene 
would excite simply horror. A Dutch fish-market, represented with per- 
fect fidelity by a humorous painter, charms us, and our pleasure increases 
as we follow out the details ; in the real market, we should pass along ra- 
pidly with averted eyes and nose. The joys and sorrows of the hero of a 
poem or work of imagination affect us in like manner with deep pleasure, 
while we feel only pain at actual sufferings, and actual joys ever appear in- 
complete and imperfect. Even happiness, supposing it to be attained, al- 
ways brings with it the bitter thought, How long will it last ? Well, there- 
fore does Schiller say, " Ernst is das Leben, heiter ist die Kunst." (Serious, 
or stern, is life, cheerful is art.) Art alone, — the creation of fancy, — pro- 
cures unmingled pleasure ; and therefore let us, dear Julia, never cease to 
rejoice that an active creative fancy is stirring within us, and sometimes pro- 
cures us enjoyments which reality cannot bestow. Shall I then prepare for 
myself such an innocent festival, and fly across the sea to you ? we have 
been but too long asunder. 

How beautiful does everything appear to me ! It is spring ; — the violets 
send forth enchanting fragrance after the heavy shower ; swallows are twit- 
tering in the air, and pretty little water-wagtails are running merrily round 
the lake. And now the sun breaks from behind the last lingering dark cloud, 
in all his majesty, and draws strange characters on the distant mountains. 
The old limetrees around us gleam like emeralds ; gay butterflys try their 
light wings, and frolic, as if drunk with joy, over the grassy carpet. Bees 
hum busily around the thousand fresh flowers, and green beetles glitter in 
the sunlight. But now a splendid bow arises out of the west, spans the blue 
sky above the castle, and sinks on the black pine-forest. Now is the cheer- 
ful white-covered table set, and decked with polished utensils. The juicy 
fruits of the hot-house, hyacinthine Xeres in crystal cups, and champagne 
covered with thick mist, from the ice, await the guests : — and see who ad- 
vances slowly and gravely among the shrubs, with that dignified air? 

Ah, it is you, dear Julia, I exclaim enraptured — fly towards you, and 
* * * * * * * * 

Thus does fancy paint. What however in reality unhinges me is, that it is 
a long time since I had a letter from you, and I really want one to restore 
my nerves. But I must dress for a couple of ' Russian steam balls' as they 
ought to be called. 

April 1th. 

As the Lord Mayor has invited me to his great dinner, I rode into the 
city this morning to call on him : this is rather a perilous enterprise, with 

* This is quite contrary to what the author has himself remarked on the picture of 
Seneca, and contrary I think to the fact. — Thansl. 



128 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

a fidgetty horse. Once I got so entangled in the crowd, that I was abso- 
lutely forced to turn my horse on the • trottoir.' This the people regarded 
as an invasion of their rights ; and not observing that necessity drove me 
thither, began to abuse me, and some to strike my horse : a huge gigantic 
carter held up his fist and challenged me to box with him : as however I 
felt no inclination to make this practical application of the lessons I have 
taken in the ' noble art of self-defence,' I pressed forward to a small gap 
which happily offered itself, and made my escape. 

I dined with Count Minister, a noble representative of Germany, who has 
endeavoured as far as possible to preserve German simplicity in his house- 
hold. Everybody knows his distinguished qualities as a statesman : he is 
not less remarkable for his agreeable manners and talents in social and do- 
mestic life. 

Since his residence in England, he has designed and painted the decora- 
tions for his castle in the Harz, with great taste and skill ; and his wife's 
paintings on glass are very beautiful : in a few years all the windows ojT the 
castle chapel will be adorned with her own works. The German house- 
wife however is no mere modern bel-esprit, or artist, but, like one of the 
knightly dames who are the subjects of her pencil, she takes care to have 
excellent beer brewed in her own house : — she gave me some, which I 
drank with all the gratitude of a guest in the hall of Valhalla. 

In the evening a great 'fete at Lord Hertford's, with concert, ball, French- 
play, &c, assembled the fashionable and half-fashionable world* in a mag- 
nificent and tastefully furnished house. The singularity in it is, that all the 
rooms are decorated in the same manner, — flesh-coloured stucco and gold, 
with black bronze, very large looking-glasses, and curtains of crimson and 
white silk. This uniformity produces a very 'grandiose' effect. One room 
alone (of extraordinary size for London) is white and gold, carpeted with 
scarlet cloth, and with furniture and curtains of the same colour. 

The company, ' c'est a dire la foule,' was not more vivacious than usual, 
and the whole- affair ' magnifiquement ennuyex.' 

Another house worth seeing is that of the great banker , especially 

on account of the fine collection of pictures. Here is also that triumph of 
modern sculpture, Thorwaldson's Jason, and some valuable antiques. On 
a sort of terrace on part of the house are hanging-gardens ; and though the 
shrubs have only three feet of earth, they grow very luxuriantly. 

The lady of the gardens is however no Semiramis ; ' il s'en faut,' what- 
ever she may think * * * * * 
* * * * * * * * 

I could not help comparing her with her far more wealthy rival Madame 

R , and remarking how far the Jewish golden queen surpassed the 

Christian one in cordial amiability and external dignity and good-breeding. 

April 8th. 

What contributes much to the 'dullness' of English society, is the haughty 
aversion which Englishmen (note well that I mean in their own country, 
for ' abroad' they are ready enough to make advances) show to addressing 
an unknown person ; if he should venture to address them, they "receive it 
with the air of an insult. They sometimes laugh at themselves for this sin- 
gular incivility, but no one makes the least attempt to act differently when 
an opportunity offers. 



• As there are quarter, half, three-quarter, and whole blood horses in England, just 
so, and into even more subtle distinctions, is the fashionable world divided. 






IRELAND AND PRANCE, 129 

There is a story that a lady saw a man fall into the water, and earnestly 
entreated the dandy who accompanied her, and who was a notoriously 
good swimmer, to save his life. Her friend raised his ' lorgnette' with the 
phlegm indispensable to a man of fashion, looked earnestly at the drowning 
man, whose head rose for the last time, and calmly replied, " It's impos- 
sible, Madam, 1 never was introduced to that gentleman." 

I made the acquaintance of a man of very different manners this evening ; 
the Persian Charge d' Affaires, an Asiatic of very pleasant address, and 
whose splendid costume and black beard were only deformed, in my eyes, 
by the Persian peaked cap of black sheepskin. He speaks very good 
English, and made very acute observations on European society. Among 
other things he said, that though in many respects we were much further 
advanced than they, yet that all their views of existence were of a firmer 
and more composed character ; that every man reconciled himself to his 
lot ; whereas he remarked here an incessant fermentation, an everlasting 
discontent, both of masses and of individuals; nay, he confessed that he 
felt himself infected by it, and should have great trouble, on his return to 
Persia, to fall back into that old happy track, in which a man who is un- 
fortunate consoles himself, exclaiming, " Whose dog am I then, to want to 
be happy ?" 

This indeed furnishes ample matter for reflection to the pursuers of the 
ideal, to which secret association I, alas ! belong. 

A ball at Mrs. Hope's was very splendid, ' mais c'est toujours la meme 
chose.' In a party to which I went before this, I was presented to the 
Duke of Gloucester. I only mention the fact for the sake of remarking, 
that the English Princes of the Blood observe a much more courteous sort 
of etiquette than most of those on the Continent : the Duke, who was play- 
ing whist, rose from the table, and did not sit down again till our short 
conversation was ended. ' 

But let me go back for a moment to the beginning of the day. 

The gardens of the neighbourhood are now in full bloom, the weather is 
fine, and my ride this morning brought me about thirty miles from town. 
In variety and richness the suburbs of London surpass those of any other 
capital ; which here and there display natural beauties, but never that ex- 
quisite mixture of nature and the highest cultivation, — never at least in 
any considerable masses. 

I should have gladly ridden further and further, and returned at length 
with great regret. The meadows around me were so luxuriant, that it 
was only at a distance they looked green; when you were near them they 
were embroidered with blue, yellow, red, and lilac, like a carpet of Tour- 
nay. The cows were waging up to their bellies in the gay flowers, or 
resting under the shadow of huge domes of foliage, impenetrable to every 
ray of sun. It was magnificent, and adorned with a richness which art 
can never reach. In an hour's riding I reached a hill where the ruins of 
a church stood in the midst of a garden. The sun darted its rays from 
behind a cloud athwart the whole sky, like a huge torch, the centre of 
which rested directly on the metropolis of the world, — the immeasurable 
Babel which lay outstretched with its thousand towers, and its hundred 
thousand sins, its fog and smoke, its treasures and its misery, further than 
the eye could reach. It was in vain ! I must plunge into it again, from 
the spring and its bursting blossoms, from the green meadows — again into 

17 



130 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the macadamized slough, — into the everlasting dead monotony, — into din- 
ners and routs- 
Accept my farewell — my next letter will go on to tell what became of 
Daniel in the lion's den. 

Your faithful friend L . 



LETTER XV. 

London, April 15th, 1827. 
Dearest Friend, 

At letigth the long-desired letter is arrived, and another in its company. 
Why was it so long on the road ? — c Quien sabbe V as the South Ameri- 
cans say. Probably the official reader was lazy, and let it lie by him some 
time before he would take the trouble to re-seal it dexterously. 

But, dear Julia, how pretty and tender is your poem — a new talent, 
which I never discovered in you before. Yes, may God grant that " all 
your tears may turn to flowers, to adorn us and refresh us with their fra- 
grance !" and that this beautiful and loving prophecy may soon be fulfilled ! 
And yet the fairest flowers would be too dearly bought, for "me, at that 
price. Your tears at least ought not to flow to produce them. 

What you say of H , " qu'il se sent miserable parcequ'il n'est fier 

que par orgueil et liberal que par bassesse" is striking, and will unfor- 
tunately suit too many liberals. 

I wrote to you on the occasion in question, that you should think only 
of yourself; and you reply, that I am yourself. Best and kindest ! yes, 
one self we will remain wherever we may be ; and had men guardian 
spirits, ours must act in common : but here we have no other tutelary 
genius than that moral strength which Heaven has given us. 

And is it really so melancholy in M 1 You tell me of storms and 

torrents of rain that threaten destruction. But a fortnight has passed 
since that was written — before this reaches you it will be a month. I 
shall hope therefore that you are reading it in the midst of the green 
spring, with every thing blooming around you, and with the zephyr fanning 

you instead of the furious wind. I told my old B dt that there were 

terrible storms in M . " Ja, ja," replied he, " those are the Brighton 

ones." If you had known that, dearest Julia, you would have thought 
them more agreeable, for they would have brought you the latest news of 
your friend. I beg you to give my most sincere and heartfelt thanks to 
our honoured Premier. Were all of his classy like him, how much more 
popular would government be ! Were all Ministers as high-minded and 
as upright, how would the universal discontent be diminished ! and how 
much more free and independent would they themselves be of those many 
weights which drag them down, just when it is most necessary they should 
soar ! 

All goes on here as usual. This evening, a splendid fete at Lord 

H 's closed the Easter festivities. Most fashionable people now make 

another short stay in the country, and in a fortnight hence the season pro- 
per begins. I am going back to Brighton for a few days, but shall wait 
for the Lord Mayor's dinner. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 131 

April 16th. 

This took place to-day in Guildhall ; and now that I have recovered 
from the fatigue, I am extremely glad I went. 

It lasted full six hours, and six hundred people were present. The 
tables were set parallel from the top to the bottom of the hall, with the 
exception of one which was placed across it, at the top. At this the Lord 
Mayor himself and his most distinguished guests were seated. The ' coup 
d'ceil' from hence was imposing ; — the vast hall and its lofty columns, 
the tables extending further than the eye could reach, and the huge mirror3 
behind them, so that they seemed prolonged to infinity. The brilliant illu- 
mination turned night into day ; and two bands of music, in a balcony at 
the end of the hall opposite to us, played during the toasts, which were all 
of a national character. The Lord Mayor made six-and-twenty speeches, 
long and short, well and truly counted. A foreign diplomate also ven- 
tured upon one, but with very bad success, and had it not been for the 
good-nature of the audience, who called out ' Hear, hear !' every time he 
was at fault, till he had collected himself again, he must have suck fast, 
and so remained. 

At every toast which the Lord Mayor gave, a sort of master of the 
ceremonies decorated with a silver chain, who stood behind his chair, 
called aloud, ' My lords and gentlemen, fill your glasses !' The ladies were 
frightfully dressed, and with a ' tournure' to match. I was seated next to 
an American, the niece of a former President of the United States, as she 
told me, — but I really forget which. It is to be presumed that her red 
hair and Albino complexion are not common among her countrywomen, 
or their beauty would not be so celebrated. Her conversation, however, 
was very clever, and had something of the humour of Washington Irving. 

At twelve o'clock the ball began. It must have been curious enough, 
from the motley character of the company : I was, however, so tired with 
sitting six mortal hours at dinner, in full uniform, that I drove home as 
fast as I could, and for once went to bed at midnight. 

Brighton, April 17th. 

In this morning's paper we read the speech of the diplomate I mention- 
ed to you : — N. B. not what it was, but what it ought to have been, — 
which is often the case. 

Immediately after breakfast I drove out with Count D , a very 

merry, amusing Dane, and spent the evening at Lady 's, where I 

met many of the persons I had seen here before : and Lady , whom 

you remember at Paris as the object of the Duke of Wellington's adora- 
tions. 

A propos of him, — do you read the newspapers 1 Here is a great crisis 
in the political world. Canning's appointment as Premier has given such 
offence to the other Ministers, that seven have resigned, and only three 
remain in place. It is said that the party will find it difficult to go on 
without some of them, — for instance, Lord Melville. The Duke of Wel- 
lington also loses considerably by the change. He who was all in all, is 
now declared, with the usual exaggeration of party spirit, " politically 
dead." There is, however, something magnanimous in thus sacrificing 
one's personal views to one's opinions. Caricatures rain upon the defeat- 
ed, and some of them are very witty. The old Lord Chancellor Eldon, 



132 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 






who is very unpopular, is particularly ill-treated. So is Earl W , a 

singular old man, who has the most preposterous aristocratical haughtiness, 
looks like a mummy, and spite of his eighty years, is daily to be seen 
crossing St. James's park on a fast-trotting horse, with the velocity of a 
bird. 

Brighton, April 20th. 

To-day 1 have had full experience how dangerous the fogs here may 
become. I had not thought of this in London, where the scenes they 
occasion are generally only ludicrous. 

An acquaintance had lent me his hunter, as I had left mine in London, 
and I determined to ride, in a direction as yet unknown to me, towards 
what is called the Devil's Dyke. I had already ridden some miles over 
the smooth turf, when suddenly the air was obscured, and in a few minutes 
I could not see ten steps before me. Thus it remained ; nor did there 
appear the least hope of its clearing. I passed an hour in riding to and 
fro in search of a tracked road ; — my light clothing was soaked through, 
the air ice-cold, and had night overtaken me, the prospect was not the most 
agreeable. In this extremity, wholly unacquainted with the country, it 
happily occurred to me to give my old horse, who had often hunted over 
these downs, completely his own way. In a few paces after he felt him- 
self perfectly free he turned short about, and set off' at a pretty brisk gallop 
directly down the hill upon which I was. I took good care not to disturb 
him, spite of the obscurity around me, even when he broke through a field 
of high prickly broom and furze, over which he leapt like a hare. A 
few inconsiderable hedges and ditches of course retarded him still less; 
and after half an hour's pretty hard running, the good beast brought me 
safely to the entrance of Brighton, though on the opposite side to that from 
which I had set out. I was heartily glad to get oft so well, and seriously 
determined to be more prudent in this land of fog for the future. 

I generally spend my evenings at Lady K 's or Mrs. F 's, and 

play ecarte and whist with the men, or loo with the young ladies. These 
small circles are much more agreeable than the great parties of the metro- 
polis. There, every art is understood but the art of society. Thus, for 
instance, musicians, artists, poets, and men of talent generally, are invit- 
ed merely as fashionable decorations ; to live with them, to extract enjoy- 
ment from their conversation, or from their genius, is a thing utterly un- 
known. All real cultivation has a political character and tendency; party 
spirit, and the fashionable spirit of caste pervade all society. Hence arises 
not only a universal ' decousu,' but a rigorous division of the several ele- 
ments ; which, combined with the naturally unsocial temper of English- 
men, must render a residence among them unpleasant to every foreigner, 
unless he either has access to the most intimate family circles, or can take 
a lively interest in political affairs. 

The happiest and the most respectable class in England is, without all 
doubt, the middle class, whose political activity is confined to the improve- 
ment of their own immediate province, and among whom tolerably just 
views and principles generally prevail. People of this unfashionable class 
are also the only truly hospitable, and are wholly devoid of the arrogant 
airs so disgusting in their superiors. They do not run after a foreigner; 
but if he comes in their way, they treat him with kindness and sympathy. 






IRELAND AND PRANCE. 133 

They love their country passionately, but without any view to personal 
interest, — without hope of sinecures, or intrigue for place. They are often 
ridiculous, but always deserving of respect, and their national egotism is 
restricted within more reasonable bounds than that of their superiors. 

It may now be said with equal truth of England as it formerly was of 
France, ' que les deux bouts du fruit sont gates,' — the aristocracy and the 
mob. The former unquestionably holds a most noble station : but without 
great moderation, without great concessions made to reason and to the 
spirit of the times, they will perhaps not occupy this station half a century 

longer. I once said as much to Prince E ; he laughed in my face, — 

' mais nous verrons.' 

I send you a few excerpts from the newspapers, to give you an idea of 
the freedom of the press. 

1st. " Every ship in the Navy ought to hoist her colours ; for Lord 
Melville was an incubus that weighed down the service. Meritorious 
officers may now have a chance, — under Lord Melville they had none." 

2nd. " We hear from good authority that the Great Captain takes ex- 
traordinary pains to get into the Cabinet again, but in vain. This spoiled 
child of fortune ought not to have imagined that his resignation could for 
a moment have embarrassed the government. We believe, however, that 
he is not the only ex-Minister who already bitterly repents his folly and 
arrogance." 

3rd. " The Ministerial Septemvirate who wanted to extort power, are 
much indebted to Mr. Hume's new Act. According to the old law, ser- 
vants who tried to extort higher wages from their masters were very 
properly sent to the tread-mill." 

4th. " We are assured that a great Septemvir has offered to re-enter 
the service, on condition that he be made Directing Minister, Grand Con- 
stable, and Archbishop of Canterbury." 

Our Ministers would stare not a little if our blotting-paper journals were 
to make as free with them. 

To-morrow I return to town : for as the Romans formerly called Rome 
" the city," so do the English call London " town." 

London, April 22nd. 

I arrived just in time to be present at a dinner-party at the new 
Premier's, to which I received an invitation in Brighton. 

This distinguished man is as remarkable for the grace and charm with 
which he does the honours of his house, as for the eloquence with which 
he carries away his auditors. 'Bel esprit' and statesman by turns, he 
wants nothing but better health : he seemed to me very unwell and suffer- 
ing. Mrs. Canning is also a very intelligent woman. I have been assured 
that she holds the newspaper department, i. e. that she reads them, and 
informs her husband of all the important matter they contain ; nay, even 
that she has occasionally written articles herself. 

A concert of Countess 's was very fully attended. Galli and 

Pasta, who are arrived, and will greatly raise the state of the Opera, sang. 
The rooms were choke-ful, and several young men lay on the carpet at 
the feet of their ladies, with their heads luxuriously reclined against the 
cushions of the sofas on which their fair ones were seated. This Turkish 
fashion is really very delightful j and I wondered extremely that C 



134 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

did not introduce it in Berlin, and deposit himself for once at the feet of 
one of the ladies in waiting. The Berliners would have thought this 
1 charmant' (as they call it) in the English Ambassador. 

April 25th. 

After a long interval I re-visited the theatre. I was in good luck, for 
Liston acted ' a mourir derire,' in a little farce the scene of which is laid 
in Paris in the time of Louis the Fifteenth. A rich English merchant, 
tormented with the spleen, goes to that city for amusement. Scarcely is 
he fairly settled in his hotel when the minister of police is announced, and 
presently enters, admirably dressed in the costume of the time. He dis- 
closes to the astonished citizen that the police is on the track of a notorious 
gang of thieves, who, suspecting that he had a great deal of money with 
him, had laid a plan to break into his house that night, and to rob and 
murder him. The minister adds, that every thing now depends on his 
own behaviour ; that if he shows the slightest consciousness, if he appears 
less cheerful than usual, or does any thing unwonted betraying anxiety, he 
will probably hasten the proceedings of the robbers, and in that case that 
the police could not be answerable for his safety — indeed that his life would 
probably be in the greatest danger, for that it was not sure that the people 
of the house were not in the plot ; — he must therefore go to bed at ten 
o'clock as usual, and let matters take their course. 

Mr. Jackson, more dead than alive at this intelligence, wants instantly 
to leave the house. But the minister gravely replies that this can by no 
means be suffered, and would be no security to him ; for that the robbers 
would discover his new residence, and then make more sure of their prey. 
" Make yourself perfectly easy," concludes Monsieur de Sartines, "all will 
be well if you do but put a good face upon the affair." 

You may easily imagine what ludicrous scenes are produced by the con- 
tinual efforts of the old merchant to conceal the horrible fright he is 
in. Meanwhile his servant, a true Englishman, always thirsty, finds some 
wine in a closet and eagerly drinks it. It turns out to be antimonial wine, 
and in a few minutes he is seized with violent sickness ; his master in- 
stantly concludes that the plan is to poison, instead of shooting or stabbing 
him. At this moment the hostess comes in with a cup of chocolate. In 
a transport of rage and terror, Liston seizes her by the throat, and forces 
her to drink the chocolate ; which, after some surprise at the oddness 
of English manners, she very willingly does. Liston's by-play during this, 
and the manner in which, suddenly recollecting his promise, he bursts 
into a convulsive laugh, and tries to turn it off as a jest, is unspeakably 
droll. At length ten o'clock arrives ; and after many burlesque inci- 
dents, Mr. Jackson goes to bed in his velvet breeches, lays a sword and 
pistols by his side, and draws the curtains quite close. It unfortunately 
happens, that the daughter of the host has a love-affair, and had given 
her lover ' rendezvous' in this' very room before the stranger had engaged 
the lodging. To avoid discovery she glides softly in, puts out the light 
cautiously, and goes to the window, at which her lover is already climb- 
ing in. As soon as he springs into the middle of the room, and begins to 
speak, groans of terror are heard from the bed : first one pistol falls down 
with a clatter, then another ; the curtain opens ; Liston makes a feeble 
thrust with the sword, which falls from his trembling hand, throws himself 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 135 

out of bed, and in his curious costume falls on his knees before the girl, 
who is as terrified as himself, and pitiously implores mercy, while the lover 
slily conceals himself behind the bed. The door is thrown open, and the 
minister of police enters with torches, to inform the trembling Jackson that 
the band of robbers is taken ; and adds, with a smile, as he looks at the 
group, " I congratulate you that you have found so agreeable a way of 
passing the time." 

April 26th. 

A strange place I have visited to-day ! A church called the Areopagus, 
in which a clergyman, the Rev. Robert Taylor, preaches against Chris- 
tianity, and permits any one publicly to oppose him. He has retained only 
one tiling of the Anglo-Christian church — to make you pay a shilling for 
your seat. Mr. Taylor has some learning, and is no bad speaker, but as 
passionate a fanatic for the destruction of Christianity as some others are 
for its support. He says strong things — sometimes true, often false ; 
sometimes witty, and sometimes utterly indecorous. The place was 
thronged with hearers of all classes. — In a nation which is at so very low 
a point of religious education, it is easy to understand that a negative apos- 
tle of this sort may attract a great concourse. In Germany, where the 
people are far advanced in the rational path of gradual reform, an under- 
taking of the kind would fill some with pious horror, would attract nobody, 
and would justly disgust all, — even if the police did not render such an 
exhibition impossible. 

The first Almack's ball took place this evening : and from all I had 
heard of this celebrathed assembly, I was really curious to see it ; but 
never were my expectations so disappointed. It was not much better than 
at Brighton. A large bai*e room, with a bad floor, and ropes around it, 
like the space in an Arab camp parted off for the horses ; two or three 
small naked rooms at the side, in which were served the most wretched 
refreshments; and a company into which, spite of the immense difficulty 
of getting tickets, a great many ' Nobodies' had wriggled ; in which the 
dress was generally as tasteless as the ' tournure' was bad ; — this was all. 
In a word, a sort of inn-entertainment : — the music and the lighting the 
only good things. And yet Almack's is the culminating point of the En- 
glish world of fashion. 

This overstrained simplicity had, however, originally a motive. People 
of real fashion wished to oppose something extremely cheap to the mon- 
strous ' faste' of the rich ' parvenus;' while the institution of Lady -patron- 
esses, without, whose approbation no one could be admitted, would render 
it inaccessible to them. Money and bad company (in the aristocratic 
sense of the word) have however, forced their way : and the only charac- 
teristic which has been retained is the unseemly place, which is not unlike 
the ' local' of a shooting ball in our large towns, and forms a most ludi- 
crous contrast with the general splendour and luxury of England. 

May 1st. 

At E 's this morning I found Prince S , who is just come from 

the coronation at Moscow by way of Brazil ; (such is the ease and rapid 
ity of travelling in our times.) For natural beauty, he gave the prefer- 
ence to the island of Madeira, over every country he had seen. He was 



136 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

but just eight days in coming from thence to London, which has set me 
longing to make the excursion as soon as the season is over. 

From four o'clock in the afternoon till ten, I sat in the House of Com- 
mons ; crowded, in horrible heat, most uncomfortably seated ; and yet 
with such eager, excited attention, that the six hours passed like a mo- 
ment. 

There is something truly great in such a representative assembly ! This 
simplicity of exterior ; this dignity and experience ; this vast power with- 
out, and absence of all pomp within ! 

The debate this evening was moreover of the highest interest. Most 
of the former Ministers have, as you know, resigned ; among them, some 
of the most influential men in England, and (since Napoleon's and Bliicher's 
death)"the greatest Commander in Europe. Canning, the champion of the 
liberal party, has defeated this Ministry, and is, spite of all their efforts, 
become head of the new one, the formation of which was left to him, ac- 
cording to the usual custom here. But the whole power of the exasperated 
ultra-aristocracy and their dependants presses upon him ; and even one of 
his most particular friends, a commoner like himself, is among the resign- 
ing Ministers, and has joined the hostile party. This gentleman (Mr. Peel) 
to-day opened the attack, in a long and clever speech, though full of repe- 
tition. It would lead me too far, and greatly exceed the bounds of a cor- 
respondence like ours, were I to go into the details of the present political 
questions. My object is only to give you an idea of the tactic with which 
on the one side, the leader of the new Opposition headed the attack, and 
was followed by several more obscure combatants, who planted a stroke 
here and there ; while on the other, the old Opposition, the Whigs, (who 
now support the liberal ministry with all their might,) more skilfully 
commenced with their musketry, and reserved the heavy fire of their 
great gun, Brougham. In a magnificent speech which flowed on like a 
clear stream, he tried to disarm his opponent ; now tortured him with 
sarcasms ; now taking a higher flight, wrought upon the sensibility, or 
convinced the reason of his hearers. I must attempt to give you a spe- 
cimen of this extraordinary piece of eloquence.* 

The orator closed with the solemn declaration, that he was perfectly 
impartial ; that he could be impartial ; for that it was his fixed determina- 
tion never, and on no terms, to accept a place in an Administration of these 
kingdoms. f 

I had heard and admired Brougham before. No man ever spoke with 
greater fluency, — hour after hour, in a clear unbroken stream of eloquence, 



* The reader may be curious to see this fine passage in its spirited translation. I have 
not been able to prevail on myself to attempt to translate it back into other English than 
that of the speaker. — Trans. 

" Nicht um Platze zu erlangen, nicht um Reichthumer zu erwerben ja nicht einmal 
um den Catholiken unsres Landes ihr natilrliches und menschliches Recht wiedergegeben 
zu sehen, eine Wohlthat, um die ich seit 25 Jahren Gott und die Nation vergebens anrufe, 
nicht filr alles dieses habe ich mich dem neuen Ministerium angeschlossen, nein, sondem 
nur, weil, wohin ich mein Auge wende, nach Europa's civilisirten Staaten, oder nach 
Amerika's ungeheurem Continent, nach dem Orient oder Occident, ish uberall die Mor- 
genrbthe der Freiheit tagen sehc, — ja, ihr allein habe ich mich angeschlossen, indem ich 
dem Manne folge, der ihr Vorfechter zu seyn, eben so wiirdig als willig ist !" 

+ This, we find, was only a figure of speech. — Edit. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 137 

— with a fine and distinct organ, — riveting the attention, — without once 
halting, or pausing, — without repeating, recalling, or mistaking a word ; 
defects which frequently deform Mr. Peel's speeches. Brougham speaks 
as a good reader reads from a book. Nevertheless, it seems to me that 
you perceive only extraordinary talent, formidable pungent wit, and rare 
presence of mind : — the heart-warming power of genius, such as flows 
from Canning's tongue, he possesses, in my opinion, in a far lower degree. 

Canning, the hero of the day, now rose. — If his predecessor might be 
compared to a dexterous and elegant boxer, Canning presented the image 
of a finished antique gladiator. All was noble, refined, simple ; — then sud- 
denly, at one splendid point, his eloquence burst forth like lightning — grand 
and all-subduing. A kind of languor and weakness, apparently the con- 
seqence of his late illness and of the load of business laid upon him, seemed 
somewhat to diminish his energy, but perhaps increased his influence over 
the feelings. 

His speech was, in every point of view, the most complete, as well as 
the most irresistably persuasive ; — the crown and glory of the debate. 
Never shall I lose the impression which this, and that other celebrated 
speech of his on the affairs of Portugal, made upon me. Deeply did 
I feel on each of these occasions, that the highest power man can ex- 
ercise over his brother man, — the most dazzling splendour with which 
he can surround himself, before which that of the most successful warrior 
pales like the light of phosphorus in the sun, — lies in the divine gift of 
eloquence. Only to the great master in this godlike art is it given to 
affect the heart and mind of a whole nation with that sort of magnetic 
somnambulism, in which nothing is possible to it but blind and absolute 
surrender and following; while the magic rod of the magnetiser is equally 
absolute over rage and gentleness, over war and peace, over tears and 
smiles. 

On the following day the House of Lords was opened under the same 
remarkable circumstances as the House of Commons had been, though 
there are no men of talents equal to Brougham, nor, above all, to Canning. 
Lord Ellenborough rose first, and said that the late Ministers were accus- 
ed of having resigned in consequence of a combination, and of having thus 
been guilty of the great offence of endeavouring to abridge the constitu- 
tional prerogative of the King to change his ministers entirely at his own 
freewill. For the preservation of their honour he must therefore claim 
for them to be heard fully in their own justification. — Here I saw the great 
Wellington in a terrible strait. He is no orator, and was compelled, ' bon- 
gre, malgre,' to enter upon his defence, like an accused person. He was 
considerably agitated ; and this senate of his country, though composed 
of men whom individually, perhaps, he did not care for, appeared more 
imposing to him ' en masse' than Napoleon and his hundred thousands. 
There was, however, something touching to me in seeing the hero of this 
century in so subdued a situation. He stammered much, interrupted and 
involved himself; but at length, with the help of his party, who at every 
stumbling-block gave him time to collect himself by means of noise and 
cheers (exactly as it was with the Ambassador's speech at the Lord 
Mayor's feast,) he brought the matter tolerably to this conclusion, — that 
there was no ' conspiracy.' He occasionally said strong things, — probably 
stronger than he meant, for he was evidently not master of his stuff*. 
Among other things, the following words pleased me extremely. — " I am 

18 



138 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

a soldier and no orator. I am utterly deficient in the talents requisite to 
play a part in this great assembly. I must be more than mad if I ever 
entertained the insane thought (of which I am accused) of becoming Prime 
Minister."* All the Lords who had resigned made their apology in turn, 
as well as they could. Old Lord Eldon tried the effect of tears, which he 
has always at hand on great occasions : but I did not see that they pro- 
duced any corresponding emotion in the audience. He was answered by 
the new Peer and Minister, Lord Goderich, formerly Mr. Robinson, for 
himself and the Premier, who, being a commoner, cannot appear in the 
House of Lords, though he governs England, and is become too illustri- 
ous, as Mr. Canning, to exchange that name for a title. 

The new peer's speech was a very good one, but the beginning excited 
an universal laugh. True to long habit, he addressed the speaker of the 
House as " Sir." He was so ' decontenance' at his blunder, that he put 
his hand to his forehead, and remained for a time speechless ; but recovered 
his self-possession with the help of the friendly " Hear, hear!" 

Lord Holland distinguished himself as usual by sharp and striking ex- 
position ; Lord King by a great deal of wit, not always in the best taste ; 
Lord Lansdowne by calm, appropriate statement, more remarkable for good 
sense than for brilliancy. Lord Grey far excelled the rest in dignity of 
manner, a thing which English orators, almost without exception, either 
neglect or cannot acquire. The want of decorum, remarkable in the lower 
house, which is like a dirty coffee-house, and where many of the represen- 
tatives of the people lie sprawling on the benches with their hats on, and 
talking of all sorts of trifles while their colleagues are speaking, seldom 
appears here. The place and the deportment are, on the contrary, suited 
to the senate of a great nation. 

When I question myself as to the total impression of this day I must 
confess that it was at once elevating and melancholy ; — the former when I 
fancied myself an Englishman, the latter when I felt that I was a German. 

This twofold senate of the People of England, spite of all the defects and 
blemishes common to human nature which are blended in its composition, 
is yet something in the highest degree grand ; and in contemplating its 
power and operation thus near at hand, one begins to understand why it is 
that the English nation is, as yet, the first on the face of the earth. 

May 3d. 

To-day, for a change, you shall follow me from the serious business of 
Parliament to the theatre. 

The piece was a mere spectacle : — dramatic exhibitions of that sort are 
more beautifully and skilfully executed here than in any other country. 
I shall confine myself to describing the ' scenery.' 



* This declaration of the Duke has frequently been alluded to since, even in the Lower 
House. The following, which I heard from the amiable lady to whom it was addressed, is 
less known. — In the month of November of this year, (1830,) the Premier was conversing 

with Princess C and the Duchess of D , on various characterise cs of the French 

and English nations, and their respective advantages. " Ce qui est beau en Angleterre," 
said the Duke with evident self-complacency, " c'est qui ni le rang, ni les richesses, ni la fa- 
vour ne saurient elever un Anglois aux premieres places. Le genie seul les obtient et les, 
conserve chez nous." The ladies cast down their eyes ; and in a week from that time the 
Duke of Wellington was out of office. — Editor. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 139 

In a wild mountain district of Spain, a Moorish castle rises amid rocks 
in the distance. It is night, but the moon shines brightly in the blue 
heavens, and mingles her pale light with the brilliant illumination of the 
windows of the castle and the chapel. A road winding among the moun- 
tains is visible at many points ; and at length, supported on arches of ma- 
sonry, leads to the foreground. 

A band of robbers now glide stealthily forth from the thicket, and con- 
ceal themselves by the road-side. — You discover from their conversation 
that they are lying in wait for a rich prize. 

Their handsome young leader is distinguished by his commanding air 
and his splendid dress, in the style of the Italian banditti. After a short 
interval you see the castle-gates in the distance unclose, a drawbridge is 
let down, and a state-carriage drawn by six mules rolls along the road. 
Sometimes you lose it behind the mountains ; — it approaches, growing 
larger and larger (an effect admirably produced by figures of various di- 
mensions,) and at length comes on the stage at a brisk trot. A few shots 
are immediately fired by the robbers, the coachman is killed, and the 
plunder of the carriage goes forward amid noise and confusion. In the 
midst of the tumult the curtain falls. 

At the beginning of the second act you see the same scene, but it excites 
quite different emotions. The lights in the castle are extinguished, — the 
moon is veiled behind a cloud. In the dim light you imperfectly distinguish 
the carriage, with the doors rent from the hinges. On the box lies the 
murdered driver; the pallid head of one of the fallen robbers is seen above 
a stone trench; and the handsome captain leans dying against the trunk of 
a tree, while his boy Gilblas is vainly trying to check the flight of the 
departing spirit. This half-dead, half-living picture, is extremely powerful 
and touching. 

My morning calls were useful, for they procured me three tickets for 
the next Almack's ; and I prevailed upon one of the most rigorous and 
dreaded of Patronesses to give me a ticket for a little obscure ' Miss of my 
acquaintance,' — an immense ' faveur !' 1 was, however, obliged to ma- 
noeuvre and entreat a long time to obtain it. The young lady and her 
party nearly kissed my hands, and behaved as if they had gained the great 
prize in the lottery. 

After Almack's, there is no way of approaching an English lady so good 
as politics. There has been nothing to be heard lately, whether at dinner 
or at the Opera, nay even at balls, but Canning and Wellington from every 

pretty mouth ; nay, Lord E complained that his wife disturbed him 

with politics at night. She frightened him by suddenly calling out in her 
sleep, " Will the Premier stand or fall ?" 

If I improve myself in nothing else here, I shall in politics and cabriolet- 
driving ; the latter one learns to perfection. You wind along at full speed, 
among carts and carriages, where you would have thought you must have 
stopped for minutes. A residence in such a metropolis of the world cer- 
tainly tends to correct all one's small views of things : one regards them in 
a broader manner, and more ' en bloc' 

May 10th. 

The eternal uniformity of the season goes on for ever. A soiree at Lady 
Cowper's, one of the gentlest of Lady-patronesses ; another at Lady Jer- 
sey's, one of the handsomest and most distinguished women in England, 



140 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

— both preceded by an Indian melodrame, — filled my evening very agree- 
ably. The scene of the melodrame lay in an island whose inhabitants 
were endowed with the delightful gift of flying. The prettiest girls came 
floating in in masses, like flights of cranes, and when very pressingly 
courted just let their wings sink ; but if you were emboldened by this, — a 
nod — and the graceful, many-coloured folds expanded, and away they 
went ; nor could one so much as see the slender cords by which they were 
drawn up. 

At a dinner and soiree at Prince Polignac's there were several interest- 
ing persons ; among them the Governor of Odessa, one of the most agree- 
able Russians I have seen, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, the celebrated 
painter. I was told that he regularly loses at billiards (of which he makes 
the great mistake of fancying himself a master) the enormous sums ho 
gains by his art. He is a man of interesting appearance, with something 
• du moyen age' in his features, strongly reminding one of the pictures of 
the Venetian school. 

Still more was I attracted by the Portuguese eyes of the Marchioness 
: Portuguese and Spanish eyes eclipse all others. 

Prince Polignac's niece told me that her uncle's hair, which is perfectly 
white, while the rest of his appearance is youthful and agreeable, had turned 
gray at the age of five-and-twenty, in the course of a few weeks, from the 
anxiety and horror of a revolutionary dungeon.* He may well find the 
present contrast agreeable ; but, alas ! the Restoration cannot restore the 
colour of his hair. I was interested by this circumstance ; for you know, 
my good Julia, mine has also patriotically begun to assume our national 
colours, white and black. 

A curious foreigner who wishes to see all the gradations of social life, 
can hardly hold out a London season. More than forty invitations are now 
lying on my table, — five or six for each day. All these fete-givers must 
be called upon in a morning ; and, to be courteous, one must go in person: 
1 C'est la mer a boire;' and yet on my way to parties I continually pass ten 
or a dozen houses which I don't know, where the same mass of carriages 
is standing before the door. 

A ball at which I was lately present was peculiarly brilliant, and was 
attended by some of the Royal Princes. When this is the case, the vanity 
of the host has introduced the fashion of mentioning it on the card : " To 
meet his Royal Highness," &c. &c. is the laughable phrase. The whole 
garden belonging to the house was built over, and divided into large rooms, 
which were hung with draperies of rose-coloured and white muslin, orna- 
mented with enormous mirrors and numerous chandeliers, and perfumed 
with the flowers of every zone. 

The Duchess of Clarence honoured the entertainment with her presence ; 
and all pressed forward to see her, for she is one of the few Princesses 
whose personal character inspires far more respect than their rank, and 
whose infinite goodness of heart and amiable disposition have gained her a 
popularity in England of which we Germans may be proud ; the more so 
as she is probably destined to be Queen of these realms. 

The person who gave this ball was, however, far from being fashionable ; 

* How little did my departed fiiend suspect that this badly organized head was destined 
to bring such evils upon the world ! Good will indeed arise out of that, as out of all evil ; 
but we shall hardly reap the fruits. — Editor. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 141 

a quality which is susceptible of the strangest ' nuances.' But every one, 
fashionable or not, refines upon his neighbour's entertainment as he can. 

The next day Countess L gave a ball, at which I was obliged to 

alight at least a thousand steps from the house, as it was utterly impossible 
to get through the crowd of carriages. Several equipages that had tried 
to force their way were fast locked together, and the coachmen were swear- 
ing the most terrible oaths. At this ball the hot-houses were tapestried 
with moss of various hues, and the ground thickly strewed with new-mown 
grass, out of which flowers seemed to grow freely here and there ; the 
stalks were illuminated, which doubled the splendour of their colours. The 
walks were marked by coloured lamps, glittering like jewels in the grass. 
Gay arabesques were described among the moss on the walls in the same 
manner. In the background was a beautiful transparent landscape with 
moonlight and water. 

May 15th. 

Riding out to-day with several ladies, the question arose which way we 
should take, the best to enjoy the beautiful spring evening. Just then we 
saw an air-balloon floating in the sky, and the question was answered. For 
more than ten miles did the untired ladies follow their aerial guide, as if on 
a ' steeple chase,' but it vanished at length from our sight. The evening 
was devoted to a grand diplomatic dinner, at which several of the new 
Ministers were present ; and to a ball in a German house, whose solid and 
tasteful magnificence equals the best English ones, and excels most in the 
agreeable qualities of its possessors ; I mean Prince Esterhazy's. 

My journal will soon be like Bernouilly's Travels, which mainly treat of 
invitations, dinners, and evening parties. But you must take the thing as 
it comes. Liken this journal to a stuff upon which are very different em- 
broideries, some rich, some poor. Tl>3 strong lasting stuff is my unalter- 
able love for you, and the wish to make you live with me, as far as it is 
possible, my distant life ; the embroideries are only copies of what I see or 
experience, and must therefore take the same character, be the colours 
sometimes glowing, sometimes faint. And it were not to be wondered at if 
they faded altogether in the choking city, which never can afford such lovely 
hues as beautiful nature. 

May 21st. 

I give you notice beforehand that I must remain true to the same theme, 
and record a breakfast at the Duke of Devonshire's at Chiswick. 

This is the prettiest sort of fete given here ; they are given in the country, 
and the company are dispersed through the house and the beautiful gardens. 
Though called breakfasts, they begin at three and do not leave off before 

midnight. Prince B , brother-in-law of Napoleon, was there, — another 

of those whom I formerly saw in that splendour which they borrowed 
only from the Sun of the world, — a splendour which so quickly vanished 
with its source. 

But the great ornament of the fete was the beautiful Lady Ellenborough. 
She came in a small carriage drawn by poneys not larger than Kamtschat- 
kadale dogs, which she drove herself. From henceforward the doves may 
be unyoked from the chariot of Venus, and poneys harnessed to it instead. 

All sorts of equipages fare worse here than any where. At last night's 
Almack's there was such a ' bagarre' among them, that several ladies were 



142 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

obliged to wait for hours before the chaos was reduced to any order. The 
coachmen on these occasions behave like madmen, trying to force their way, 
and the English police does not trouble itself about such matters. As soon 
as these heroic chariot-drivers espy the least opening, they whip their 
horses in, as if horses and carriage were an iron wedge ; the preservation 
of either seems totally disregarded. In this manner, one of Lady Sligo's 
horses had its two hind-legs entangled in such a manner in the fore-wheel 
of a carriage, that it was impossible to release them, and one turn of the 
wheel would infallibly have broken both. Notwithstanding this, the other 
coachman could hardly be prevailed on to stand still. When the crowd dis- 
persed a little, they were forced to take out both horses, and even then it 
was with some difficulty they extricated the entangled one. All this time 
the poor animal roared like the lion in Exeter 'Change. At the same time 
a cabriolet was crushed to pieces, and ' en revanche' drove both its shafts 
through the window of a coach, from which the screams of several female 
voices proved that it was already full: many other carriages were damaged. 
After this description, you, dearest, with your ' poltronnerie,' will scarce- 
ly trust yourself here in a carriage. It were certainly safer to adopt the 
fashion of the time of Queen Bess, when all, even the most delicate court- 
maidens, went a-visiting on horseback. 

May 27th. 

I had the honour of dining with the Duke of Clarence to-day. The 
Princess Augusta, the Duchess of Kent, her daughter, and the Duchess of 
Gloucester were present. The Duke is a very kind, friendly host, and al- 
ways does me the favour to remind me of the various times and places at 
which we have met before. He has much of the true Englishman, in the 
best sense of the word, and the English love of domestic life. This din- 
ner was given in celebration of the birthday of Princess Carolath.* He 
gave her health; at which the gentle Emily, spite of her intimacy with 
the amiable Duchess, her relation and friend, blushed over and over. 

Among the guests I must mention Sir George Cockburn, who took Na- 
poleon to St. Helena. He told me many circumstances which proved Na- 
poleon's extraordinary power of winning those whom he had any desire 
to win. The Admiral likewise admired the sincerity with which Napo- 
leon spoke of himself, as of an indifferent historical personage; and among 
other things, openly declared that the Russians had so completely outwit- 
ted him in Moscow, that up to the very last day he was continually in 
hope of peace, till at length it was too late. ' C'etait sans doute une grande 
faute,' added he coolly. 

The Duke's daughters are ' d'un beau sang,' all remarkably pretty, 
though all in a totally different style. Among the sons, the most distin- 
guished is Colonel Fitzclarence, whose travels overland from India, through 
Egypt, you read with so much interest. He has also written on the Ger- 
man Landwehr, of which he is no partisan. Seldom does one find a young 
officer of such varied accomplishments. I have known him a long time, 
and have frequently had occasion to be grateful for his obliging and friend- 
ly manners. 

* Daughter of the lady to whom these letters are addressed, by her former husband, Count 
Pappenheim — Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 143 

His eldest sister is married to Sir Philip Sidney. I heard from her that 
not only has the series of portraits been preserved unbroken in that illus- 
trious family from Lord Leicester's time downwards, but also a lock of hair 
of every successive head of the family. Among other curious documents 
they have also a list of the guests at the feast at Kenilworth, and some 
very remarkable household accounts of that time. I believe Sir Walter 
Scott has used these papers. 

In the evening Pasta warbled at Countess St. A 's, and two or three 

balls closed the day. 

Maxj 26th. 

This morning in the Park I could not restrain a hearty laugh at a 
young lord, who has not profited much by his residence at Paris, and 
whose beautiful horse attracted more admiration than himself. " Quel 
beau cheval que vous avez la!" said I. " Oui," replied he, with his Eng- 
lish accent ; " je l'ai fait moi meme, et pour cela je lui suis beaucoup 

attache." Is not this almost as good as the deaf Russian officer in B , 

to whom the King said, on the entrance of a surgeon, " Ce poisson la est 
bien frequent chez vous." "Oui, Sire," replied he, with a profound bow, 
" je l'ai ete pendant quinze ans." 

' Rex Judaeorum' gave a magnificent dinner, the dessert of which alone, 
as he told me, cost a hundred pounds. I sat next to a very clever wo- 
man, Mrs. A , the friend of the Duke of W , avery characteris- 
tic, acute, un-English physiognomy, — you may think what an ' enrageV 
politician. I must have annoyed her excessively ; in the first place I am 
a great Canningite ; in the second, I hate politics at dinner. We had a 
great exhibition of splendour. The table service was of vermillion and 
silver ; that of the dessert, I think, all gold. Under the portrait of Prince 
Metternich (a present from the original) in an adjoining room, was a large 
gold box, perhaps a copy of the Ark of the Covenant. A concert suc- 
ceeded the dinner, at which Mr. Moschelles played as enchantingly as his 
wife looked. It was not till two o'clock that I got away to a rout at the 
Duke of Northumberland's, a small party of about a thousand persons. 
Music was performed in an immense picture-gallery, at thirty degrees of 
Reaumur. The crowd and bustle was however so great that we heard 
little of it. The atmosphere was like that of the black-hole at Calcutta. 
Are these really the amusements of civilized nations ! 

May SI st. 

The rich Lady L , with whose ' black diamonds' her complexion 

forms the most agreeable contrast, and whose ' air chiffonne' is quite ori- 
ginal, showed me her bazaar this morning. It is no common one, for it 
contained jewels to the amount of three hundred thousand reichsthalers. 
The whole boudoir full of perfumes, flowers, and rarities, the ' clairobscur' 
of rose-coloured curtains, and the Marchioness herself in a dress of yellow 
gauze, reclined on her chaise longue ' plongee dans une douce langueur ;' 
— it was a pretty picture of ' refinement.' Diamonds and pearls, pens and 
ink, books, letters, toys and seals, and an unfinished purse, lay before her. 
Among the seals, two were piquant, from their contrast, — the one from 
Lord Byron : 

" Love will find its way 
Where wolves would fear to stray." 



144 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

The other says, with true French ' philosophic,' * Tout lasse, tout casse, 
tout passe.' Nothing, however, was so common in the house as portraits 
of the Emperor Alexander who had paid great attention to the Marchion- 
ess at V , and whose image had been thus multiplied by gratitude. 

Her husband was ambassador there, and used his English prerogative to 
its full extent. Once he boxed with a ' fiacre' driver : another time he 
presented the Archduchess, and, if I mistake not, the Empress herself, to 
his wife, instead of the reverse; — then he ran into the kitchen to stab his 
cook for having offended the Marchioness : ' enfin. il faisant la pluie et le 
beau terns a V ; ou plutot l'orage et la grele.' 

Just conceive how ' disappointed' the poor lady must be, after so long 
ruling on the Continent, ' malgre ses diamans, son rang, et sa jolie mine,' 
not to be able to be really and truly fashionable. But this aristocracy of 
fashion is more difficult to attain to than the highest rank of freemasonry, 
and much more capricious than that venerable institution, though both 
alike make something out of nothing. 

1 dined at Lord Darnley's, where I met Lord Bloomfield, formerly a 
conspicuous man, and great favourite of the King's ' du terns de ses fre- 
daines.' There was also the Archbishop of York, a majestic old man, 
who began life as a private tutor, and has reached this elevated station by 
the patronage of his pupils. Nothing can be at once more ugly and more 
laughable than the demi-toilette of an English Archbishop. A short 
schoolmaster's wig ill-powdered, a black French coat, and a little black 
silk ladies' apron hung over the inexpressibles in front, just as our miners 
hang theirs behind. 

We were extremely well entertained with game and excellent fruits 
from Cobham ; and after dinner drove to a concert, which was very dif- 
ferent from any I had heard here. These concerts were set on foot by 
several noblemen and distinguished persons, admirers of the music of 
Handel, Mozart, and the old Italian masters, whose compositions are here 
exclusively performed. It's long since I had such a treat ! What is the 
modern Trilliliren compared with the sublimity of that old church music 1 
I felt transported back to the days of my childhood, a feeling which always 
strengthens the soul for days, and gives it a fresher, lighter flight. The 
singing was excellent throughout, and often of an unearthly beauty in its 
simplicity ; for it is inconceivable what a power Grod has given to the 
human voice when rightly employed, and poured forth in a simple and 
sustained flow. Handel's choruses in the Oratorio of Israel in Egypt, 
make you think you feel the night which overshadowed Egypt, and hear 
the tumult of Pharaoh's host, and the roaring of the sea that engulfs them 
in its waters. 

I could not bring myself to listen to ball-fiddling after these sacred tones, 
and therefore retired to my own room at twelve o'clock, willingly leaving 
Almack's and another fashionable ball unvisited. I shall carry the echo of 
this music of the spheres into my dreams, and, borne on its wings, shall 
take a spiritualized flight with you, my Julia : • Are you ready ? Now we 
fly.' 

June 1st. 

My old B — waked me very early, which he never does unless he 

has a letter from you to give me. On all lesser occasions he lets me sleep 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 145 

on, however particularly I may have desired him to call me. His apology 
always is, " You were so sound asleep !" 

It is really lucky that I have not that sort of vanity which is intoxicated 
by praise, otherwise you would make a complete fool of me. Alas ! I 
know myself too well, and a hundred faults which your love but half per- 
ceives. The little devil whom you attack certainly often possesses me. 
But he is tolerably innocent, often a poor foolish, honest little devil, of a 
sort that stands midway between angel and devil, as to the morality of the 
business ; — in a word, a genuine weak child of man. But as he displeases 
you, poor little imp, I shall put him into a bottle, like Ilofinann, and cork 
him down with Solomon's seal. From this time I shall produce only the 
Herrnhiiter before you : — you know I passed my youth among that sect, 
' et si je m'en ressens, je no m'en ressens gueres.' 

1 shall certainly be present at the fancy-ball you mean to give in imita- 
tion of that at Brighton. Nobody will know me, for the good reason that 
I shall be invisible : I shall only imprint a kiss on your forehead, and then 
be off* like a thought : — be on the watch therefore ! 

June 3d. 

I wandered yesterday from the regions of the gay world once more 
into the city, and observed the toiling industry which is continually produ- 
cing some fresh article of luxury. Every day sees some new invention. 
Among them may be reckoned the countless advertisements, and the man- 
ner of putting them 'en evidence.' Formerly people were content to paste 
them up ; now they are ambulant. One man has a pasteboard hat, three 
times as high as other hats, on which is written in great letters, " Boots 
at twelve shillings a pair, — warranted." Another carries a sort of banner, 
on which is represented a washerwoman, and the inscription, " Only three- 
pence a shirt." Chests like Noah's ark, entirely pasted over with bills, 
and of the dimensions of a small house, drawn by men or horses, slowly 
parade the streets, and carry more lies upon them than Munchausen ever 
.invented. 

I arrived at Mr. R 's very tired, and accepted an invitation to dine 

with him at his counting-house. During dinner we philosophized on the 

subject of religion. ' R est vraiment un tres bon enfant,' and more 

obliging than most men of his class, — whenever he thinks he risks nothing 
by it, which one cannot blame him for. In our religious discussion he 
had somewhat the best of it, for he is of the ancient nobility in matters of 
faith : they are the true aristocrats in this subject, and will hear of no inno- 
vation or reform. I wound up by saying, with Gothe, Alle Ansichten sind 
zu loben ; and drove in a crazy hackney-coach back to the ' West End of 
the Town,' — where there are neither Jews nor Christians, but only Fash- 
ionables and Nobodies, — to hear Pasta sing at Mrs. P 's, and to play 

ecarte, de moitie with Lord H 's friend. 

I came home at four o'clock, fell asleep by rosy day light, and fancied 
my bed was the moss of a forest. I was waked by a piteous cry : I look- 
ed around, and saw a poor devil come plump down through the air from 
the top of a high tree, and fall on the ground near me. Groaning, and 
pale as ashes, he crawled up, and cried out thut it was all over with him. 
I was hastening to help him, when a creature like an inkstand with a stop- 
per came up, and, with heavy curses, gave the half-dead man several blows 
with his stopper. I watched my time, pulled out the stopper ; and as the 

19 



146 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ink streamed forth, he changed himself into a Moor in a splendid silver 
jacket and elegant costume, who cried out laughing, that if I would only 
let him alone, he would shew me such things as I never saw before. Now 
began such conjurations as left all the Pinettis and Philadelphias in the 
world fur behind. A large closet changed its contents every minute ; and 
all the treasures of Golconda, with unheard-of curiosities, were presented 
to my view. 

My dream went on increasing in extravance. Did you ever hear of 
such mad visions as haunt me here ? It's the melancholy fog, the suffoca- 
ting air of London, which clouds my senses. I send them to you therefore, 
that you may let them out in our own sunshine, and on their heavy wings 
I lay a thousand affectionate greetings of your faithful Friend, 

Jj— — — . 



LETTER XVI. 

London, June 5th, 1827. 

This morning I paid a visit to Mrs. Hope, and saw her husband's collec- 
tion of works of art more in detail. A very beautiful Venus by Canova 
was peculiarly interesting to me, having seen it some years ago, unfinished, 
in the ' atelier' of that delightful artist in Rome ; it then left a more agree- 
able impression on my mind than any of his works. 

Among the pictures, I was particularly struck with the infamous Cesare 
Borgia, by Correggio. What a sublime villain ! He stands in the most 
intrepid manly beauty; vigour and loftiness of mind beam from every 
feature ; in the eyes alone lurks the ferocious tiger. The collection is 
peculiarly rich in pictures of the Flemish school ; many of them are of 
inimitable truth, which I freely confess has often a greater charm for me 
than even the perfect representation of an Ideal, if that does not happen to 
hit some kindred conception in my own mind. 

Thus a fine stately old Dutch burgher's wife, drinking down a glass of 
wine with great ' delice,' — her husband wrapped in his cloak with the bot- 
tle out of which he has just helped her still in his hand, while he looks at 
her with good-natured pleasure, — was to me a very attractive subject. 

So, likewise, some officers of the sixteenth century in their handsome 
and appropriate dress, carousing after their hard and bloody toils : and 
several others, equally true to nature. Among the landscapes I made ac- 
quaintance with a Hobbima, which has the greatest resemblance to the 
manner of Ruysdael. Fruit, which almost deceived the sense, by Van 
Huysum and Van Os. Houses, in which every tile is given, by Van der 
Meer. Several Wouvermans, Paul Potters, &c. &c. — nothing was want- 
ing to complete the richness of the collection. Only the modern English 
pictures were bad. 

The rest of the day I staid at home, to hallow the birthday of my good 
mother, alone and in quiet. 

June 7th. 

As a sample of the necessities of a London dandy, 1 send you the follow- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 147 

ing statement by my ' fashionable' washerwoman, who is employed by 
some of the most distinguished <elegans,' and is the only person who can 
make cravats of the right stiffness, or fold the breasts of shirts with plaits 
of the right size. An ' elegant,' then, requires per week, — Twenty shirts ; 
twenty-four pocket-handkerchiefs; nine or ten pair of ' summer trowsers;' 
thirty neck-handkerchiefs (unless he wears black ones ;) a dozen waist- 
coats ; and stockings ' a discretion.' 

I see your housewifely soul aghast. But as a dandy cannot get on with- 
out dressing three or four times a day, the affair is ' tout simple,' for he 
must appear, 

1st. In breakfast toilette, — a chintz dressing-gown and Turkish slippers. 

2nd. Morning riding dress, — frock coat, boots and spurs. 

3rd. Dinner dress, — dress coat and shoes. 

4th. Ball dress, with ' pumps,' a word signifying shoes as thin as paper. 

At six o'clock the Park was so full that it was like a rout on horseback, 
only much pleasanter ; instead of carpets or chalked floors there was the 
green turf, a fresh breeze instead of stifling heat and vapour; and instead 
of tiring one's own legs, one made the horse's do all the work. 

Before I rode thither 1 called on Princess E and found three young 

and handsome ' ambassadrices en conference, toutes les trois profondement 
occupees d'une queue ;' namely, whether it was necessary to wear one at 
the queen of Wiirtemberg's, or not. 

At a ball this evening, at the forementioned Marchioness of London- 
derry's, I saw the Polonaise and the Mazurka danced here for the first 
time, — and very badly. We supped in the Statue Gallery. Many ladies 
had hung shawls and other articles of dress on the statues, which dread- 
fully shocked one's feeling for art. At six I came home, and am writing 
to you while they are closing my shutters to make an artificial night. The 
valets here have a sad life of it, and can only sleep out of hand, if I may 
say so, or like watchmen, in the day. 

June \Zth. 

I have already told you that one is invited here to a Royal Prince, just 
as in some other places, among intimate friends, to a dainty dish. I was 
thus invited yesterday to dine with the Duchess of Gloucester, and to-day 
with the Duke of Sussex. This Prince, who is ' brouille' with the King, 
has gained great popularity by his liberal opinions, and quite deserves it. 
He has been much on the Continent, and likes the German mode of life. 
Our language is perfectly familiar to him, as indeed it is to most of his 
brothers. In compliment to him, after the ladies left the table, cigars were 
brought, and more than one smoked, which I never before saw in England. 
Monsieur de Moutron told a great many droll stories, with genuine French 
address. But the most amusing person was Major Keppel, the Persian 
traveller, who related some rather ' scabreuses' but amazingly ' piquantes' 
anecdotes, which he would not commit to print, and which I reserve till we 

meet. In the morning I drive to Ascot with young Captain R , and 

shall visit Windsor, to make some break in this life of uniform dissipation. 
It is supposed that the races will be unusually brilliant, as the King is to 
be present, and his horses are to run. 



148 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Windsor, June 14</t. 

After a rapid drive of twenty-five English miles, — partly through Wind- 
sor Park, behind which the Castle, the residence of so many kings, rears 
its head, — we reached the wide and barren heath of Ascot, where the races 
are held. The place presented a perfect picture of pleasuring encampment. 
Endless lines of tents for horse and man ; streets of carriages along the 
course, chiefly filled with pretty women; high stands, consisting of three 
or four stages one above another, with the King's stand at the goal ; — all 
this enlivened by twenty or thirty thousand people, of whom many have 
been encamped here five or six days : — such are the leading features of the 
motley picture. One part forms a sort of fair, where among the other 
booths and tents, — like a Liberty or Free Quarter* in the middle ages, — 
are to be found various games of hazard, elsewhere severely forbidden. 

The iadies in the carriages are provided with excellent breakfasts, and 
champagne, which they distribute with great hospitality. I found many 
old friends, and made some new acquaintances ; among others, an extremely 

agreeable woman, Lady , who invited me to dine at her cottage. As 

the races ended for to-day at six o'clock, we drove to T Park, through 

a most beautiful country, so thickly studded with trees that spite of its 
ploughed fields it had the appearance of a cultivated wood. We arrived 
before the family, and found the house open, but without a servant or any 
living creature in it. It was like the enchanted dwelling of a fairy, for a 
more lovely abode cannot be conceived. Could you but have seen it ! On 
a rising ground, half-concealed by the most magnificent old trees, stood a 
house whose various jutting parts, built at different periods, and here and 
there hidden by the shrubberies, never permitted the eye to catch its entire 
outline. A sort of colonnade of rose-trees, covered with flowers, led directly 
into the hall ; and passing through some other apartments and a corridor, 
we reached the dining-room, where a table stood richly covered, — but still 
no human being was visible. The garden lay before us, a perfect paradise, 
lighted by the glow of the evening sun. Along the whole house, now pro- 
jecting, now receding, were verandas of various forms, and clothed with 
creeping plants. These formed a border to the gayest flower-garden, 
covering the whole slope of the hill. Close upon the edge of it was a deep 
and narrow green valley ; behind which the ground rose again and formed 
a higher line of hill, the side of which was clothed with huge beeches. At 
the end of the valley the near view was terminated by water. In the 
distance, above the crown of trees, was seen the ' Round Tower' of Wind- 
sor Castle, with the majestic royal banner floating in the blue air. This 
was the only object to remind us that Nature, or some beneficient fairy, did 
not reign alone here ; but that man, with his pleasures, his pomps, and his 
necessities, was near at hand. Like a beacon-tower of ambition it looked 
down upon the peaceful cottages; alluring the gazer to a higher but more 
deceitful enjoyment, which he who obtains buys only with his own grievous 
loss. Peace and contentment abide in the valley. 



* Eine alte Freiheit— At the great Councils of the Church, the political meetings, such 
as coronations and the like, and other assemblages in the middle ages, a part of the city or 
encampment where they were held, was appropriated to the persons of forbidden professions 
who resorted thither; such as jugglers, gamblers, light women, &c. This part was called 
the Freiheit or Free Quarter. — Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 149 

My poetical c extase' was interrupted by my fair hostess, who was 
greatly amused at our description of her enchanted palace, and imme- 
diately took care that we should be shown to our rooms, to make our toilet, 
which the dust and heat rendered very necessary. An excellent dinner, 
with iced champagne and delicious fruits, was very grateful, and we re- 
mained at table till midnight. Coffee and tea, with music, occupied two 
hours more, the latter of which, I must in all sincerity confess, we could 
willingly have dispensed with. 

After our agreeable evening a rather disagreeable incident awaited me. 

As I was going to bed B began to exclaim that ill-luck followed him 

everywhere. 

" Why, what has happened ?" 

" O Lord ! if 1 could help it I would not tell, but it must come out." 

" Now, Devil take you, make an end ; what is it ?" 

The confused-headed old fellow had put a purse with five and twenty 
pounds I gave him into the pocket of the carriage, instead of into the seat ; 
and, like Kotzebue's stupid country squire, took it out in the tumult of the 
booths to pay for a glass of beer, changed a sovereign, because as he said 
he had no small money, and then carefully put the purse in the same place 
again. It followed, as a matter of course in England, that when he re- 
turned to the carriage it was gone. 

Richmond, June ISth. 

This morning we visited the Castle, which is now completing according 
to the old plan, and is already the vastest and most magnificent residence 
possessed by any sovereign in Europe. The time was too short to see the 
interior, which I therefore deferred to another opportunity. I only paid a 

visit to the Duchess of C , who lives in the great tower and enjoys 

a delicious view from her lofty balcony. Among her attendants was a 
beautiful Greek boy in his national costume, scarlet, blue, and gold, with 
naked legs and feet. He was saved from the massacre of Scio by beino- 
hidden in an oven. He is now become a perfect Englishman, but has re- 
tained something inexpressibly noble and foreign in his air. At one 
o'clock we returned to the race-ground ; and this tfcne I received my 
breakfast (luncheon) from the hands of another beauty. At the close of 

the races we drove to Richmond, where R 's regiment is quartered, 

and passed a very joyous evening with the officers. The universal com- 
petence of England permits a far more luxurious life than military men 
enjoy with us. These gentlemen deny themselves nothing, and their mess 
is better served throughout than many a princely table in Germany. 

In the morning this regiment of Hussars and a regiment of Lancers are 
to be reviewed by an Inspecting General, which I shall stay to see. 

June 16ik. 
The regiment went through its business very well ; with less affecta- 
tion, — perhaps with less precision, — than our marvellously trained three- 
year horse-soldiers ; but with more true military coolness, and with the 
steadiness and ease resulting from long habit : all their evolutions too were 
more rapid, from the excellence of their horses, with which those of the 
Continent are not to be compared. The English cavalry has gained im- 
mensely in command of the rein, and in military seat, since the last war, 



150 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

which is mainly to be ascribed to the care and attention of the Duke of 
Wellington : the men had their horses as well in hand as the best of ours. 
The extraordinary thing, according to our notions, was to see the perfect 
ease with which fifty or sixty officers in plain clothes, — several General 
officers among them, some in undress jackets and top-boots, some in frock- 
coats and coloured cravats, — took part in the review, and thronged around 
the Inspecting General, who with his two aids-de-camp were the only men 
in uniform, except the regiment. Nay, even some supernumerary officers 
of the regiment itself, not on actual service, rode about with him in civil 
dress and shoes, — a sight which would have given such shock to the nerves 

of a general, as would have endangered his intellects for ever. 

In a word, one sees here more of the reality ; with us, more of the form. 
Here, 'tis true, the clothes do not make the man ; and this simplicity is 
sometimes very imposing. 

R told me that this regiment was originally formed by the Tailors' 

Company, at the time of the threatened French invasion, and at first con- 
sisted entirely of tailors. They are now transformed into very sturdy 
martial hussars, and fought with great distinction at La Belle Alliance. 

June 18tk. 

Since the day before yesterday I have returned to the old track. I 
' debutai' with four balls, and a dinner at Lord Caernarvon's, where I met 
Monsieur Eynard, the celebrated Philhellenist, whose pretty wife mani- 
fests an equal enthusiasm for the Greek cause. Yesterday I dined at 
Esterhazy's, and met a young Spaniard whom I could not help wishing 
an actor, that he might play Don Juan, for he seemed to me the perfect 
Ideal of that character. With the tones of the dramatic Pasta, whom one 
hears every evening, ringing in my ears, I went to bed. 

This evening there was a concert at the tall Duke's, where every body 
was in raptures at old Velluti, because he sang well once upon a time. He 
lives here upc-.i his ancient fame. From thence I went to one of the prettiest 
balls I have seen in London, at the house of a Scotch woman of rank. 
The largest room was entirely decorated with paper lamps made in the 
forms of various fleers, very tastefully grouped. 

As we got into our carriages at six o'clock, by sunshine, the ladies had 
a most strange appearance. No ' fraicheur' could stand this test : they 
changed colour like chameleons. Some looked perfectly blue, some 
mottled, most of them death-like, their locks hanging about, their eyes 
glassy. It was frightful to see how the blooming rosebuds of lamplight 
were suddenly changed by the sunbeams into faded withered roses. 

June 23rd. 

What say you, dear Julia, to a breakfast given to two thousand people ? 
Such an one took place to-day in the 'Horticultural Gardens,' which are 
extensive enough to accommodate that number of persons conveniently. 
Not that there was any deficiency of horrible crowding in the tents in 
which the provisions were placed, — especially where the prize fruits were 
exhibited. As soon as the prizes were distributed, they were devoured in 
the twinkling of an eye, in the coarsest and most unseemly manner. There 
was one Providence pine which weighed eleven pounds ; deep red and 
green ones of not much smaller dimensions ; strawberries as big as small 



ICELAND AND FRANCE. 151 

apples ; and the rarest choice of delicious fruits of all kinds. The fete, 
on the whole, was gay, and of an agreeable rural character. 

The smooth turf, and the well-dressed company that trod it ; the tents 
and groups among the shrubs ; perfect masses of roses and flowers of 
every kind, produced the most cheerful, agreeable scene. I drove there 
with our Ambassador, with whom I returned at seven in the evening. 
We could not help laughing at the strange industry of an Irishman, who 
affected to light us to our carriages, with a lantern in which there was, of 
course, no light, as it was broad day. By this piece of manual wit he 
earned a shilling from the merry and good-natured. One of his English 
comrades called out to him, " You are showing the way to liberal people." 
"Oh!" said he, " if I did not know them for such, I should not go with 
them." Odd enough too were the Tyrolese singers, who are in great 
fashion ; they call every body, even the King, who talks German with 
them, ' Dif (thou), and are strangers to all false shame or fear of man. It ia 
comical enough to see one of them go up to Prince Esterhazy, to whose 
patriotic favour they are chiefly indebted for their great vogue, put out 
his hand to him and exclaim, " Nun, was machst Du, Esterhazy ?" (lite- 
rally, " Well, what art thou about, Esterhazy ?") The little female in 
this party of wonderful animals came up to me to-day and said, " I have 
been looking at thee a long time, for thou art so like my dear John, that 
I must give thee a kiss." The offer was not very tempting, for the girl 
is ugly ; but as His Majesty himself has kissed her (of which there is a 
good caricature in the shops), the proposal is now esteemed flattering. 

June 26th. 

The Duke of Northumberland had the kindness to show me his fine 
palace to-day in detail. I here found what I had long vainly desired to 
see, — a house in which not only the general effect is that of the highest 
splendour and elegance, but every thing, the greatest as well as the 
smallest, is executed with equal exactness and perfection, — ' ou rien ne 
cloche.' 

Such an Ideal is in this instance completely realized. You do not find 
the smallest trifle neglected, not a line awry, not a sp%sk of dirt, nothing- 
faded, nothing out of fashion or keeping, nothing worn out, nothing sham, 
not an article of furniture, not a window, or a door, which is not, in its- 
way, a model of workmanship. 

This extraordinary perfection has indeed cost several hundred thousand 
pounds, and doubtless no little trouble ; but it is perhaps unique in its 
kind. The richest embellishment from works of art and curiosities is also 
not wanting. The arrangement of the latter on terrace-formed shelves 
covered with violet velvet, behind which are looking-glasses in one piece, 
is very tasteful. One of the most striking things is the marble staircase, 
with a railing of gilded bronze. The hand-rail of polished mahogany at 
the top is a curious piece of workmanship : by some contrivance, which 
remains a secret, the wood is so put together that it is impossible to dis- 
cover a single joint from top to bottom. The whole seems to be made of 
one piece, or is so really. Another remarkable thing is the false ' porte 
cochere' in the outer wall, which is only opened on occasion of a great 
press of carriages ; and when closed, cannot be detected in the facade. 
It is of iron, and so completely masked by a coating of composition stone 



152 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

and a false window, that it cannot be distinguished from the rest of the 
house. — Of the pictures another time. 

At the Duke of Clarence's, in the evening, I made the acquaintance of 
a very interesting man, — Sir Gore Ouseley, late ambassador to Persia, 
who was accompanied by Mr. Morier, the author of Hadji Baba, as his 
secretary of legation. 1 must tell you two or three characteristic anec- 
dotes of that country, which I heard from him. 

The present Shah was held in such a state of dependence by his prime 
minister, Ibrahim Khan, who had placed him on the throne while yet a 
child, that he had little more than the name of a ruler. It was impossible 
for him to make any resistance, since every province or city throughout 
the empire was governed, without exception, by relations or creatures of 
the minister. At length the Shah determined to withdraw himself at all 
risks from such a bondage, and devised the following energetic means, 
which bear the genuine stamp of Oriental character. According to the 
ancient institutions of the country, there exists a class of soldiers, thinly 
scattered through all the principal towns, called the King's guard. These 
obey no order that does not proceed immediately from the King himself, 
and bear his own private signet : this guard has thus remained the only 
body independent of the minister, and the sole sure support of the throne. 
The King now secretly despatched orders, written by his own hand, to the 
chief of this faithful band, requiring them on a particular day and hour to 
put to death all Ibrahim's relations throughout the kingdom. On the ap- 
pointed day the Shah held a Divan, sought to bring on a dispute with 
Ibrahim, and when the latter assumed his usual lofty tone, commanded him 
immediately to retire to the state prison. The minister smiled, and re- 
plied, " that he would go, but that the King would be pleased to consider 
that the governor of every one of his provinces would call him to account 
for this act." " Not now, friend Ibrahim," exclaimed the King gaily, — 
" Not now." Then drawing out his English watch, and casting a wither- 
ing glance at the perplexed minister, he coolly added, " At this minute 
the last of your blood has ceased to breathe, and you will soon follow." 
And so it happened. 

The second anecdote shows that the Shah acts on the principle of the 
French song, which says, " quand on a depeuple la terre, il faut la repeu- 
pler apres." 

At Sir Gore's audience of leave, he begged the Shah graciously to tell 
him what was the number of his children, that he might give his own mo- 
narch correct information on so interesting a subject, provided, as was 
probable, he should make any inquiry. " A hundred and fifty-four sons," 
replied the Shah. " May I venture to ask your Majesty how many chil- 
dren?" The word daughters, according to the rules of Oriental etiquette, 
he dared not to pronounce, and indeed the general question was, according 
to Persian notions, almost an offence. The King, however, who liked Sir 
Gore very much, did not take it ill. " Ha ha ! I understand you," said he 
laughing ; and called to the chief of his eunuchs, " Musa, how many 
daughters have I ?" " King of kings," answered Musa, prostrating him- 
self on his face, " five hundred and sixty." When Sir Gore Ouseley re- 
peated this conversation to the Empress-mother in Petersburg, she only 
exclaimed, " Ah, le monstre !" 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 153 



June 29th. 



As the season, thank Heaven, now draws near its close, I project a tour 
to the north of England, and Scotland, whither I have received several in- 
vitations, hut had rather preserve my liberty in order to scour the country 
1 a ma guise,' if time and circumstances permit. 

To-day we had the finest weather I have seen in England ; and as I re- 
turned from the country in the evening, after an early dinner at Count 
Minister's, I saw, for the first time, an Italian light on the distance, — 
shades of blue and lilac as rich and as soft as a picture of Claude's. 

' A propos,' among the notabilia for imitation I must mention a flower- 
table of the Countess's. The top is a crystal-clear glass, under which is 
a deep box or tray filled with wet sand, with a fine wire net over it, in the 
interstices of which fresh flowers are closely stuck. The tray is pushed 
in, and you have the most beautiful flower-picture to write or work over. 
If you wish to regale yourself with the fragrance, you may open the glass 
cover, or remove it entirely. 

Children's balls are now the order of the day, and I went to one of the 
prettiest this evening at Lady Jersey's. These highborn northern chil- 
dren had every possible advantage of dress, and many were not without 
grace ; but it really afflicted me to observe how early they had ceased to be 
children ; — the poor things were, for the most part, as unnatural, as unjoyous, 
and as much occupied with themselves, as we great figures around them. 
Italian peasant-children would have been a hundred times more graceful 
and more engaging. It was only at supper that the animal instinct dis- 
played itself more openly and unreservedly, and, breaking through all 
forms and all disguises, reinstated Nature in her rights. The pure and 
lovely natural feeling, however, was the tenderness of the mothers, which 
betrayed itself without affectation in their beaming eyes, made many an 
ugly woman tolerable, and gave to the beautiful a higher beauty. 

A second ball at Lady R 's presented the hundredth repetition of 

the usual stupid throng, in which poor Prince B , for whose corpu- 
lence these squeezes are little adapted, fainted, and leaning on the banis- 
ter, gasped for air like a dying carp. Pleasure and happiness are certainly 
pursued in very odd ways in this world. 

July 3rd. 

This afternoon I rode by a long circuitous way to eat a solitary fish 
dinner at Greenwich. The view from the Observatory is remarkable for 
this, — that almost the whole surface of ground you overlook is occupied by 
the city of London, which continually stretches out its polypus arms wider 
and wider, and swallows up the villages in its neighbourhood, one after an- 
other. Indeed, for a population equal to that of^half the kingdom of Saxony 
some space is wanted. 

I went into the Ship tavern, gave my horse to the hostler, and was 
shown into a very neat little room with a balcony projecting over the 
Thames, under which the fish were swimming which I, merciless human 
beast of prey, was about to devour. The river was enlivened by a hun- 
dred barks; music and song resounded cheerfully from the steamboats 
passing by; and behind the gay scene, the sun, blood-red, and enveloped 
in a light veil of mist, declined towards the horizon. As I sat at the win- 

20 



154 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

dow, I gave audience to my thoughts, till the entrance of various sorts of 
fish as variously prepared, called me to more material pleasures. Iced 
champagne, and Lord Chesterfield's Letters, which I had put into my 
pocket, gave zest to my repast; and after a short siesta, during which 
ni<rht had come on, I remounted my horse and rode the German mile and 
a half to my home through an unbroken avenue of brilliant gas lamps, and 
over well-watered roads. It was just striking midnight when I reached 
the house, and a coffin hung with black passed me on the left like an ap- 
parition. 

July 5th. 

B gave me your letter at Almack's, and I immediately hastened 

* home' with it. How greatly have your descriptions rejoiced me ! I was 
near weeping over the venerable trees that called to me, through you, — 
" Oh, our master and lord, hearest thou not the rustling of our leafy tops, 
the home of so many birds ?" Ah, yes, I hear it in spirit, and shall have 
no true enjoyment till I am once more there with my truest friend, and the 
plants that are to me as loving children. I thank you cordially for the 
leaf of cinq foil ; and as the horse of the accompanying Vienna postillion, 
the bearer of a thousand blessings, has lost his tail on the road, I have re- 
placed it by this leaf, which gives him a genuine Holy Alliance look. 

Here my old B interrupted me with the question whether he might 

stay out for the night, promising to be back by eight in the morning. I 
gave him leave, and asked, laughing, what adventure he had in hand? 
" Ach !" said he, " 1 only want for once to see how they hang people here, 
and at six o'clock in the morning five men are to be hanged at once." 

What a discord rang through my whole being, just filled with joyous 
tumult! What a contrast between the thousands, wearied with the dance, 
and sated with multiplied amusements, returning home at that hour to their 
luxurious couches, and those wretched beings who are condemned to pass 
through anguish and pain into eternity ! I exclaimed again with Napo- 
leon, " Oh, monde, monde !" and for a long time, after a day wasted in fri- 
volity, could not go to sleep ; I was pursued by the thought that at that 
very moment perhaps these unhappy ones were called to take so fearful a 
leave of the world and its joys ; not excited and elevated by the feeling of 
being martyrs to some good or great cause, but the victims of vulgar, de- 
basing crime. Men pity those who suffer innocently : how much more 
pitiable do the guilty appear to me ! 

My imagination when once excited always outstrips wisdom and expe- 
diency ; and thus did all vain pleasures, all those refinements of luxury 
which mock at misery and privation, now appear to me in the light of real 
sins : indeed I very often feel in the same temper with regard to them. A 
luxurious dinner has often been spoiled to me when I have looked at the 
poor servants, who are present indeed, but only as assistant slaves ; or 
thought of the needy, who at the close of a long day's ceaseless toil can 
hardly obtain their scanty miserable meal ; while we, like the epicure in 
the English caricature, envy the beggar his hunger. Yet spite of all these 
good and just feelings, (I judge of others by myself,) we should be greatly 
incensed if our servant played the Tantalus and removed the dishes from 
our tempting table, or if the poor man invited himself to share our fea*t 
without the wedding garment. Heaven has ordained that some should 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 155 

enjoy, while others want ; and so it must remain in this world. Every 
shout of joy is echoed, in some other place, by aery of grief and despair; 
and while one man here breaks the cord of existence in phrensy, an- 
other is lost elsewhere in an ecstasy of delight. 

Let no one therefore fret himself vainly concerning it, if he neither de- 
serve nor understands that it should fare better or worse with him than 
with others. Fate delights in this bitter irony — therefore pluck, O man ! 
the flowers with child-like joy so long as they bloom; share their fragrance 
and beauty when you can with others, and manfully present a breast of 
steel to your own misfortunes. 

July 1th. 

I return to my daily chronicle. 

After dining with the epicurean Sir L , I passed the evening very 

agreeably in a small party at the Duchess of Kent's. The Court circles 
here, if they may be called so, have no resemblance whatever to those of 

the Continent, which once led the absent Count R into such a strange 

scrape. The King of B asked him how he enjoyed the ball that eve- 
ning ; " Oh," replied he, "as soon as the Court is gone I think it will be 
very pleasant." 

At a very late hour I drove from thence to a ball at Princess L 's, 

a lady whose entertainments are perfectly worthy of her Fashionableness 
'par excellence.' A conversation I accidentally fell into with another di- 
plomate procured me some interesting particulars. He told me about that, 
difficult mission, the purpose of which was to induce the Empress of the 
French voluntarily to quit an army still devoted to Napoleon, and consist- 
ing of at least twelve thousand picked men. Contrary to all expectation, 
however, he found in Marie Louise scarcely a disposition to resist, and very 
little love for the Emperor (which indeed the sequel has sufficiently prov- 
ed.) The little King of Rome alone, then only five years old, steadfastly 
refused to go, and could only be removed by force ; — just as on a former oc- 
casion, led by the same heroic instinct, he had resisted the Regent's pusil- 
lanimous flight from Paris. His account of the parts which many distin- 
guished men played on this occasion I must omit: I can only say that it 
confirmed me in the persuasion that the French nation never sunk to so low 
a pitch of baseness as at the time of Napoleon's abdication. 

July 10th. 

It is now more oppressively hot than I had imagined possible in this 
misty country. The turf in Hyde Park is of the colour of sand, and the 
trees dry and sear ; the squares in the town, spite of all the watering, do 
not look much better. Nevertheless the grass-plots are as carefully mowed 
and rolled as if there were really grass upon them. No doubt, with equal 
care and labour, even more beautiful turf could be obtained in South Ger- 
many than here ; but we shall never get to that, — we love our ease too 
well. 

As the heat increases, London empties, and the season is nearly over. 
For the first time I found myself without an invitation to-day, and employ- 
ed my leisure in sight-seeing. Among other things I visited the King's 
Bench and Newgate prisons. 

The former, which is principally appropriated to the reception of debtors, 



156 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

is a perfect isolated world in miniature ; — like a not insignificant town, 
only surrounded by walls thirty feet high. Cookshops, circulating libra- 
ries, coffee-houses, dealers, and artizans of all kinds, dwellings of different 
degrees, even a market-place, — nothing is wanting. When I went in, a 
very noisy game at ball was going on in the latter. A man who has mo- 
ney lives as well and agreeably as possible within these walls, — bating liber- 
ty. Even very 'good society,' male and female, is sometimes to be found 
in this little commune of a thousand persons ; but he who has nothing 
fares ill enough ; to him, however, every spot on the globe is a prison. 
Lord Cochrane passed some time in the King's Bench, for spreading false 
intelligence with a view to lower the Funds ; and the rich, highly respect- 
ed, and popular Sir Francis Burdett was also imprisoned here some time 
for a libel he wrote. The prisoner who conducted me about had been an 
inhabitant of the place twelve years, and declared in the best possible hu- 
mour, that he had no hope of ever coining out again. An old Frenchwo- 
man of very good air and manners said the same; and declared that she 
did not intend ever to acquaint her relations with her situation, for that she 
lived very contentedly here, and did not know how she might find matters 
in France. She seemed perfectly persuaded ' que le mieux est l'ennemi 
du bien.' 

The aspect of Newgate, the prison for criminals, is more apalling. But 
even here the treatment is very mild, and a most exemplary cleanliness 
reigns throughout. The Government allows each criminal a pint of thick 
gruel in a morning, and half a pound of meat or a mess of broth alternately 
for dinner, with a pound of good bread daily. Besides this, they are per- 
mitted to buy other articles of food, and half a bottle of wine a-day. They 
employ themselves as they please ; there are separate courts belonging to 
a certain number of rooms or cells : for those who like to work there are 
work rooms; but many smoke and play from morning till night. At nine 
o'clock they must all attend divine service. Seven or eight generally in- 
habit one room. They are allowed a mattrass and two blankets for sleep- 
ing, and coals for cooking, and, in winter, for warming the cells. Those 
condemned to death are put in separate less convenient cells, where two or 
three sleep together. By day, even these have a court-yard for recreation, 
and a separate eating room. I saw six boys, the eldest of whom was not 
more than fourteen, all under sentence of death, smoking and playing very 
merrily. The sentence was not yet confirmed, however, and they were 
still with the other prisoners ; it was thought it would be commuted for 
transportation to Botany Bay. Four of a maturer age, in the same pre- 
dicament, — only that the enormity of their crimes left them no hope of 
pardon, — took their fate still more gaily. Three of them were noisily 
playing whist with Dummy,* amid jokes and laughter ; but the fourth sat 
in a window-seat busily engaged in studying a French grammar. ' C'etait 
bien un philosophe sans le savoir !' 

July 12th. 

Yesterday evening I went for the first time to Vauxhall, a public gar- 
den, in the style of Tivoli at Paris, but on a far grander and more brilliant 
scale. The illumination with thousands of lamps of the most dazzling 

* Mid dem todten Maim, I believe is Englished as above-— Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 157 

colours is uncommonly splendid. Especially beautiful were large bouquets 
of flowers hung in the trees, formed of red, blue, yellow, and violet lamps, 
and the leaves and stalks of green ; there were also chandeliers of a gay 
Turkish sort of pattern of various hues, and a temple for the music, sur- 
mounted with the royal arms and crest. Several triumphal arches were 
not of wood, but of cast-iron, of light transparent patterns, infinitely more 
elegant, and quite as rich as the former. Beyond this the gardens extend- 
ed with all their variety and their exhibitions, the most remarkable of 
which was the battle of Waterloo. They open at seven : there was an 
opera, rope-dancing, and at ten o'clock (to conclude) this same battle. It 
is curious enough, and in many scenes the deception really remarkable. 
An open part of the gardens is the theatre, surrounded by venerable horse- 
chesnuts mingled with shrubs. Between four of the former, whose foliage 
is almost impervious, was a ' tribune,' with benches for about twelve hun- 
dred persons, reaching to the height of forty feet. Here we took our 
seats, not without a frightful sqeeze, in which we had to give and take 
some hearty pushes. It was a warm and most lovely night : the moon 
shone extremely bright, and showed a huge red curtain, hung, at a distance 
of about fifty paces from us, between two gigantic trees, and painted with 
the arms of the United Kingdom. Behind the curtain rose the tops of 
trees as far as one could see. After a moment's pause, the discharge of 
a cannon thundered through the seeming wood, and the fine band of the 
second regiment of Guards was heard in the distance. The curtain open- 
ed in the centre, was quickly drawn asunder ; and we saw, as if by the 
light of day, the outwork of Houguemont on a gently rising ground, amid 
high trees. The French ' Gardes' in correct uniform now advanced out of 
the wood to martial music, with the bearded ' Sapeurs' at their head. They 
formed into line ; and Napoleon on his gray horse, and dressed in his gray 
surtout, accompanied by several marshals, rode past them 'en revue.' A 
thousand voices shout ' Vive l'Empereur !' — the Emperor touches his 
hat, sets off at a gallop, and the troops bivouac in dense groups. A distant 
firing is then heard ; the scene becomes more tumultuous, and the French 
march out. Shortly after, Wellington appears with his staff, — all very 
good copies of the individuals, — harangues his troops, and rides slowly off. 
The great original was among the spectators, and laughed heartily at his 
representative. The fight is begun by the ' tirailleurs ;' whole columns 
then advance upon each other, and charge with the bayonet ; the French 
cuirassiers charge the Scotch Grays ; and as there are a thousand men 
and two hundred horses in action, and no spare of gunpowder, it is, for a 
moment, very like a real battle. The storming of Houguemont, which is 
set on fire by several shells, was particularly well done : the combatants 
were for a time hidden by the thick smoke of real fire, or only rendered 
partially visible by the flashes of musquetry, while the foreground was 
strewed with dead and dying. As the smoke cleared off, Houguemont was 
seen in flames, — the English as conquerors, the French as captives : in 
the distance was Napoleon on horseback, and behind him his carriage-and- 
four hurrying across the scene. The victorious Wellington was greeted 
with loud cheers mingled with the thunder of the distant cannon. The 
ludicrous side of the exhibition was the making Napoleon race across the 
stage several times, pursued and fugitive, to tickle English vanity, and 
afford a triumph to the ' plebs' in good and bad coats. But such is the lot 



158 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

of the great ! The conqueror before whom the world trembled, — for whom 
the blood of millions was freely shed, — for whose glance or nod kings 
waited and watched, — is now a child's pastime, a tale of his times, van- 
ished like a dream, — the Jupiter gone, and as it seems, Scapan only re- 
maining. 

Although past midnight it was still early enough to go from the strange 

scene of illumination and moonlight to a splendid ball at Lady L 's, 

where I found a blaze of diamonds, handsome women, dainty refreshments, 
a luxurious supper, and gigantic ennui ; I therefore went to bed as early as 
five o'clock. 

July 12th. 

I had often heard of a certain Mr. Deville, a disciple of Gall ; a passionate 
craniologist, who voluntarily, and only with a view to the advancement of 
his science, gives audience every day at certain hours. He carefully 
examines the skulls of his visitors, and very courteously communicates the 
result of his observations. 

Full of curiosity, I went to him this morning, and found a gallery contain- 
ing a remarkable collection of skulls and casts, filled with ladies and gentle- 
men ; some of whom brought their children to be examined with a view to 
their education. A pale, unaffected, serious man was occupied in satisfying 
their curiosity with evident good-will and pleasure. I waited till all the 
rest were gone, and then asked Mr. Deville to do me the favour to grant me 
an especial shire of attention ; for that, though it was unhappily too late 
for education with me, I earnestly wished to receive from him such an 
account of myself as I might place before me as a sort of mirror. He 
looked at me attentively, perhaps that he might first detect, by the Lava- 
terian method, whether I was ' de bonne foi,' or was only speaking ironically. 
He then politely asked me to be seated. He felt my head for a full quarter 
of an hour ; after which he sketched the following portrait of me, bit by 
bit. You, who know me so well, will doubtless be as much surprised at it 
as I was. 1 confess that it plunged me into no little astonishment, impos- 
sible as I knew it to be that he could ever have known anything about me. 
As I wrote down all he said immediately, and the thing interested me, as 
you may believe, not a little, I do not think I can have mistaken in any 
material point.* 

" Your friendship," he began, " is very difficult to win, and can be gained 
only by those who devote themselves to you with the greatest fidelity. In 
this case, however, you will requite their attachment with unshaken con- 
stancy." 

" You are irritable in every sense of the word, and capable of the greatest 
extremes ; but neither the passion of love, of hatred, nor any other, has 
very enduring consequences with you." 

"You love the arts, and if you had applied, or would apply to them, you 
would make great proficiency with little difficulty. I find the power of 
composition strongly marked upon your skull. You are no imitator, but 



* I thought of omitting this part, which certainly belongs too much to confidential cor- 
respondence to interest the generality of readers. But as it really paints the departed author 
with uncommon fidelity, and he often refers to it in subsequent letters, I hope I shall be 
forgiven for retaining it. — Editor. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 159 

like to create : indeed you must often be driven by irresistible impulse to 
produce what is new." 

" You have also a strong sense of harmony, order, and symmetry. Ser- 
vants or workmen must have some trouble in satisfying you, for nothing 
can be complete and accurate enough for you." 

" You have, — strangely enough, — the love of domestic life and the love 
of rambling about the world (which are opposed,) of equal strength. No 
doubt, therefore, you take as many things about with you as you can find 
means to convey ; and try in every place to surround yourself with ac- 
customed objects and images as quickly as possible." (This, so strikingly 
true, and so much in detail, astonished me particularly.) 

" There is a similar contradiction in you between an acute understanding 
(forgive me, I must repeat what he said,) and a considerable propensity to 
enthusiasm and visionary musing. You must be profoundly religious, and 
yet, probably, you have no very strong attachment to any particular form of 
religion, but rather (his very words) revere a First Cause under a moral 
point of view." 

" You are very vain, — not in the way of those who think themselves 
anything great, but of those who wish to be so. Hence, you are not per- 
fectly at ease in the society of your superiors, in any sense of the word, — 
nay, even of your equals. You are perfectly at ease only where, at least 
on one point, either from your station, or from some other cause, you have 
an acknowledged preponderance. Contradiction, concealed satire, apparent 
coldness, (especially when ambiguous and not decidedly and openly hostile,) 
paralyze your faculties ; and you are, as I said, perfectly unrestrained and 
' cheerful' only in situations where your vanity is not ' hurt ;' and where 
the people around you are, at the same time, attached to you, to which 
your good-nature — one of your strongest characteristics — makes you 
peculiarly susceptible." 

" This latter quality, united to a strong judgment, makes you a great 
venerator of truth and justice. The contrary incenses you ; and you 
would always be disposed to take the part of the oppressed, without any 
individual interest in the matter. You are ready to confess your own 
injustice, and to make any reparation you can. Unpleasant truths con- 
cerning yourself may vex you, but if said without hostile intention, will 
incline you to much higher esteem for the sayer. For the same reason, 
you will not rate distinctions of birth too highly, though your vanity may 
not be wholly insensible to them." 

" You are easily carried away, and yet levity is not one of your cha- 
racteristics : on the contrary, you have ' cautiousness'* in a high degree. 
It is indeed the wormwood in your life ; for you reflect far too much upon 
everything ; you conjure up the strangest fancies, and fall into distress 
and trouble, mistrust of yourself and suspicion of others, or into perfect 
apathy, at mere trifles. You occupy yourself almost always with the 
future, little with the past, and less with the present." 



* A word difficult to translate. Foresight ( Vorsichtssinri) does not express it adequately ; 
it is rather the power of calling to mind in a moment everything that can possibly result 
from an action ; and thus, almost involuntarily, of painting it from every point of view, 
which often cripple3 the energy. 



160 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

" You continually aspire (streben) ; are covetous of distinction, and 
very sensitive to neglect ; have a great deal of ambition, and of various 
kinds ; these you rapidly interchange, and want to reach your object 
quickly, for your imagination is stronger than your patience ; and there- 
fore you must find peculiarly favourable circumstances in order to suc- 
ceed." 

" You have, however, qualities which make you capable of no common 
things, even the organ of perseverance and constancy is strongly expressed 
on your skull, but obstructed by so many conflicting organs, that you stand 
in need of great excitement to give room for it to act : then the nobler 
powers are called forward, and the meaner ones recede." 

" You value wealth very highly, as all do who wish to accomplish great 
objects, — but only as means, not as end. Money in itself is indifferent to 
you, and it is possible that you are not always a very good manager 
of it." 

" You want to have all your wishes gratified in a moment, as with an 
enchanter's wand : often however, the wish expires before the fulfilment 
is possible. The pleasures of sense, and delight in the beautiful, have a 
powerful influence over you ; and as you certainly incline to the imperious, 
the ambitious, and the vain, you have here a cluster of qualities, against 
which you have need to be upon your guard not to fall into great faults ; 
for all propensities in themselves are good ; it is only their abuse that 
renders them a source of evil. Even the organs so erroneously designated 
by the father of our science the organs of murder and theft, (now more 
correctly termed organs of destructiveness and acquisitiveness) are only 
marks of energy and of desire to possess, which, when united with good- 
nature, conscientiousnes and foresight, form a finely constituted head ; 
though without these intellectual qualities they may easily lead to crime." 

He also said, that in judging of a scull it was necessary to regard not 
the separate organs, but the aggregate of the whole ; for that they respec- 
tively modified each other in various ways ; nay, sometimes entirely neu- 
tralized each other ; that therefore the proportions of the whole afforded 
the true key to the character of the man. 

As a universal rule, he laid down, that men whose skulls, if divided by a 
supposed perpendicular line drawn through the middle of the ear, pre- 
sented a larger mass before than behind, were the higher portion of the 
species ; for that the fore part contains the intellectual, the hind part the 
animal propensities. 

All the skulls of criminals who had been executed, for instance, which 
he had in his collection, confirmed his theory ; and in one distinguished 
for the atrocious character of his offence, the occiput was two-thirds of the 
whole head. The busts of Nero and Caracalla exhibit the same propor- 
tions. — Where the contrary extreme prevails, the individual in question is 
deficient in energy : and here, as in every thing, a balance is the true de- 
sideratum. 

Mr. Deville affirmed that it was possible, not only to enlarge organs 
already prominent by the exercise of the qualities they denote, but by 
that very process to diminish others ; and assured me that no age was 
excepted from this rule. He showed me the cast of a skull of a gentleman 
who, when near sixty, devoted himself intensely to the study of astronomy ; 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 161 

and in a few years the appropriate ' bosse' became so prominent as to 
project considerably beyond all others.* 

July 14. 

I have paid several visits to Mr. Nash, to whom I am indebted for much 
valuable instruction in my art. He is said to have ' erected' an enormous 
fortune. He has a beautiful country-house, and no artist is more hand- 
somely lodged in town. I was particularly pleased with his library. It 
consists of a long and wide gallery, with twelve deep niches on each side, 
and two large doorways at the ends, leading into two other spacious rooms. 
In each niche is a semicircular window in the roof, and on the wall a fres- 
co painting, copied from the « Logge di Rafaelle ;' and below these, casts 
of the best antique statues, on pedestals. The remaining space in the 
niches is occupied by books, which, however, rise no higher than the 
pedestal of the statues. Arabesques, also copied from those of the 
Vatican, admirably executed in fresco, adorn the broad pilasters between 
the niches. 

All the space on the walls or pilasters not covered with paintings is of a 
pale red stucco, with small gold mouldings. The execution seems tho- 
roughly finished and excellent. 

I dined at the Portuguese Ambassador's. Our dinner was very near 
ending like Prince Schwartzenberg's at Paris. One of Rundell and Bridge's 
beautiful brilliant silver girandoles came too near the curtain, which im- 
mediately blazed up. The flames were extinguished by the Spanish 
Ambassador ; a fact which may afford matter for witticisms to the news- 
papers, in the present political conjuncture. 

I drove half a post further in the streets, late at night, to see the tower 
of St. Giles's church, whose new bright-red illuminated clock-face shines 
like a magnificent star in the dark. 

I found your letter at home, with all sorts of affectionate reproaches 
for my negfect of our own interests for indifferent things. Even were this 
sometimes the case, you must not think that my heart is the less filled 
with you. The rose, too, sometimes yields a stronger, sometimes a 
weaker perfume ; nay, sometimes there is not a flower on the bush ; in 
their season they bud and blossom again — but the nature of the plant is 
always the same. 

Herder's prayer is beautiful — but it is not applicable to this earth ; for 
though it is true that God's sun shines on the evil and on the good, it is 
equally true that His thunderbolt strikes the good and the evil. Each 
must protect himself from calamity, with all the wisdom and the courage 
he is endowed with. 

Men are wearisome to you, you say. Oh, Heaven ! how wearisome are 
they to me ! When one has lived so long in the interchange of all feelings 
and all thoughts, the intercourse with the ' banal' unsympathizing world is 
more than empty and tasteless. 

* The individual in question is Dr. Herschel, of whose head Mr. Deville possesses two 
casts corresponding to the description above. Mr. Deville bears testimony to the accuracy 
in the main of the above report, though the language is, he says, considerably more ornate 
than that which he is likely to have used. — Transl. 

21 



162 LETTEHS ON ENGLAND, 

Your hypothesis, that two kindred souls will, in another world, melt 
into one existence, is very pretty — but I should not like to be united to you 
in that manner. One being must, indeed, love itself; but the mutual love 
of two is voluntary, and that alone has value. Let us therefore hope to 
meet again, but to be one, as we are now, — one only in mutual love and 
truth. 

One of the many currents of this great stream carried me into the An- 
nual Exhibition of Pictures. In historical pictures there was little to de- 
light the lover of art. Some portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence showed, 
as all his do, his great genius, and at the same time his carelessness. He 
finishes only particular parts, and daubs over the remainder in such a 
manner that it must be looked at from a distance, like scene-painting. The 
great masters of the art painted not so, when they devoted their talents to 
portrait painting. 

In landscapes, on the other hand, there was much that was attractive. 

First, The Dead Elephant. — The scene is a wild mountain-district in 
the interior of India. Strange gigantic trees and luxuriant tangled thickets 
surround a dark lake. A dead elephant lies stretched on its shore, and a 
crocodile, opening its wide jaws and displaying its frightful teeth, is seen 
climbing up the huge body, driving away a monstrous bird of prey, and 
menacing the other crocodiles which are eagerly swimming across the 
lake to their repast. Vultures are poised on the branches of the trees, 
and the head of a tiger glares from the jungle. On the other side are 
seen three still more formidable predatory animals, — English hunters, 
whose guns are pointed at the great crocodile, and will soon excite more 
terrific confusion among this terrific group. 

Another view is on the sea-shore of Africa. You see ships in the far 
distance. In the foreground a palm-grove slopes down to the clear steam, 
where a boat is lying at anchor, in which a negro is sleeping — but in 
what a fearful situation ! A gigantic boa-constrictor has issued from the 
wood, and, while its tail rests in the thicket, has twined itse.'f in a loose 
ring around the sleeper, it now rears its head aloft hissing with rage at his 
companions, who are hastening with their axes to his assistance. One of 
them has just fortunately succeeded in scotching it, and has thus saved the 
negro, who wakes, and stares in wild terror on the serpent. It is said 
that as soon as the muscles of the back of the boa are divided in any part 
it loses all its power. The picture is taken from an incident which really 
occurred in the year 1792. 

We are still in a distant part of the globe, but in more remote ages. A 
wondrously beautiful moonlight gleams and glitters on the Bay of Alexan- 
dria. Majestic monuments and temples of Egyptian art lie in the strongly 
contrasted light and shadow ; and from the steps of a hall of noble archi- 
tecture, Cleopatra, surrounded by all the luxury and pomp of the East, is 
descending to the golden bark which is to bear her to Antony. The most 
beautiful boys and girls strew flowers under her feet, and a chorus of old 
men with snowy beards and clad in purple, are seated on the sea-shore, 
singing a farewell song to their golden harps. 

Have you not enough of this yet, dear Julia? Well then, look at the 
Travelled Monkey, who returns to his brethren in the woods, in the dress 
of a modern ' exclusive.' They throng around him in amazement ; one 
pulls at his watch chain, another at his well starched cravat. At length, 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 163 

one whose jealousy is excited by his finery gives him a box on the ear : 
this is a signal for an universal pillage. In a few minutes he will be re- 
duced to appear once more ' in naturalibus.' 

Here I close my exhibition. Dear Julia, confess that if you were the 
editor of the ' Morgen BlattJ you could not have a more indefatigable cor- 
respondent. Whether I be well or ill, merry or sad, I always fulfil my 
duty. Just now I am by no means at my best : I am ill, and I have lost 
a great deal of money at whist. It is really extraordinary how soon one 
comes to regard a pound as a ' thaler.' Though I know the difference full 
well, and often find it not very agreeable, yet the physical effect of the 
' sovereign' here, is constantly the same upon me as that of the ' thaler' at 
home, for which I often laugh at myself. I wish fate would make a simi- 
lar mistake, and convert our ' thalers' into pounds. I, for one, should cer- 
tainly not bury mine. Yet we should put our gains to good interest ; for 
when one tries to make a beautified living creation out of dead money, as 
we have done, and at the same time to increase the comfort of those around 
one, — as I did by employing them, and you by the more direct means of 
bounty, — surely one has gained usurious interest. 

Prudence, however, is not our ' forte,' and if you have shown rather 
more than I, it is only because you are a woman, and have therefore the 
habit of being on the defensive. Prudence is far more a weapon of defence 
than of attack. 

You have now a good opportunity for the exercise of it in the S 

society, and I already see you in thought taming the refractory, and speak- 
ing the words of peace with dignified serenity. Here is your portrait on 
the margin, ' a la Sir Thomas Lawrence.' You will doubtless recognize 
that strong bent for art which the Gallite discovered on my cranium. The 
surrounding caricatures you must ascribe to my somewhat sulky humour. 

As a mind in this flat depressed tone is little fertile in thoughts, permit 
me to supply the place of them by some passages out of a singular book I 
have met with. You will think that it must have flowed not only from my 
pen but from my most inmost soul. 

" It is incalculable," says the author, " what an influence the objects 
which surround our childhood exercise over the whole formation of our 
character in after life. In the dark forests of the land of my birth, in my 
continual solitary wanderings where nature wears so romantic an aspect, 
arose my early love for my own meditations, and, when I was afterwards 
thrown among numbers of my own age at school, rendered it impossible to 
my disposition of mind, to form any intimate companionships, except those 
which I first began to discover in myself. 

" In the day my great pleasure was lonely wandering in the country : 
— in the evening, the reading of romantic fictions, which I connected in my 
mind with the scenes I was so familiar with ; and whether I sat in winter 
in the chimney corner poring over my book, or in summer lay stretched 
in luxurious indolence under a tree, my hours were equally filled with all 
those misty and voluptuous dreams which were perhaps the essence of poe- 
try, but which I was not gifted with the genius to embody. Such a tem- 
per is not made for intercourse with men. One while I pursued an object 
with restless activity, — another I lived in perfectly supine meditation. No- 
thing came up to my wishes or my imaginings, and my whole being was 
at last profoundly imbued with that bitter, melancholy philosophy, which 



164 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

taught me, like Faust, that knowledge is but useless stuff, that hope is but 
a cheat ; and laid a curse upon me, like that which hangs on him who, 
amid all the joys of youth and the allurements of pleasure, feels the presence 
of a spirit of darkness ever around him. 

" The experience of longer and bitterer years makes me doubt whether 
this earth can ever bring forth a living form which can realize the visions 
of him who has dwelt too lorigabsorded in the creations of his own fancy." 

In another place, he says of a man who was much praised : 

" He was one of the macadamized Perfections of society. His greatest 
fault was his complete levelness and equality ; you longed for a hill to 
climb ; — for a stone, even if it lay in your way. Love can attach itself 
only to something prominent, were it even a thing that others might hate. 
One can hardly feel what is extreme for mediocrity." 

' C'est vraiment une consolation !' 

Further : " Our senses may be enthralled by beauty ; but absence effa- 
ces the impression, and reason may vanquish it." 

" Our vanity may make us passionately adore rank and distinction, but 
the empire of vanity is founded on sand." 

" Who can love Genius, and not perceive that the feelings it excites are 
a part of our own being and of our immortality !" 

July 1 8th. 

Would you believe, dearest Julia, that although annoyed in various 
ways, and almost ill, I have found these days of solitude, in which I have 
been occupied only with you, my books, and my thoughts, much more 
satisfactorily, — how shall I express it? — much more fully employed, than 
that comfortless existence which is called society and the world. Play 
forms an ingredient, for that is a mere killing of time without any result, 
but has at least the advantage, that we are not conscious of the time 
we are wasting during its lapse, as we are in most so-called amuse- 
ments. How few men can rightly enter into such a state of mind ! and 
how fortunate may I esteem myself that you can ! You are only too in- 
dulgent towards me, and that makes me place less confidence in your judg- 
ments. 

Now for a secret : — When I send you any extracts from books, you are 
never to swear whose they are ; for, thanks to my boasted organ of com- 
position (you see I am still busied with Mr. Deville,) exact transcribing 
is almost an impossibility with me. A borrowed material always becomes 
something different, if not something better, under my hands. But as I am 
so excitable and mobile, I must often appear inconsistent, and my 'letters 
must contain many contradictions. Nevertheless, I hope a genuinely hu- 
mane spirit always appears in them, and, here and there, a knightly one ; 
for every man must pay his tribute to the circumstances with which birth 
and existence have surrounded him. 

Ah, if we did but live together in the old knightly days ! Many a time 
has the enchanting picture of the castle of our fathers, — such as they in- 
habited it, in the wild Spessart, frowning from rocks surrounded by old 
oaks and firs, — stood like a dim recollection before my fancy. Along the 
hollow way in the valley, I see the lord of the castle with his horsemen 
riding to meet the morning sun, (for as a true knight he is an early riser.) 
You, good Julia, lean forward from the balcony, and wave your handker- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 16,5 

chief till not a steel breastplate glitters in the sunbeam, and nothing living 
is in sight, save a timid roe that darts out of the thicket, or a high-antlered 
stag that looks proudly down from some crested crag on the country 
beneath. 

Another time we are seated, after some successful feud, at our goblets. 
You pour out the wine, which 1 quaff like a brave and true knight, while 
the good chaplain reads the wonders of a legend. Now the warder's horn 
is heard on the turret, and a banner is seen winding up to the castle 
gate. It is your former lover returned from the Holy Land — ' Gare a 
toi.'* 

July 19th. 

A cheerful ray of sun enticed me forth, but I soon exchanged the clear 
air of heaven for subterranean gloom. I went into the famous Tunnel, the 
wonderful passage under the Thames. You have read in the papers that 
the water broke in some weeks ago, and filled the part that was completed, 
five hundred and forty feet in length. Any event, lucky or unlucky, is 
sure to give birth to a caricature in a few days. There is one represent- 
ing the Tunnel catastrophe, in which a fat man on all-fours, and looking 
like a large toad, is trying to save himself, and screaming ' Fire !' with a 
mouth extended from ear to ear. With the aid of the diving-bell the hole 
has been so stopped, that it is asserted there is no fear of a recurrence of 
the accident. The water has been pumped out by a steam-engine of great 
power, so that one can descend with perfect safety. It is a gigantic work, 
practicable nowhere but here, where people don't know what to do with 
their money. 

From hence I went to Astley's theatre, the Franconi's of London, and 
superior to its rival. A horse called Pegasus, with wings attached to his 
shoulders, performs wonderful feats; and the drunken Russian courier, 
who rides six or eight horses at once, cannot be surpassed for dexterity and 
daring. The dramatic part of the exhibition consisted of a most ludicrous 
parody of the Freischiitz. Instead of the casting of the bullets, we had 
Pierrot and Pantaloon making a cake, to which Weber's music formed a 
strangely ludicrous accompaniment. The spirits which appear are all 
kitchen spirits, and Satan himself a ' chef de cuisine.' As the closing 
horror, the. ghost of a pair of bellows blows out all the lights, except one 
great taper, which continually takes fire again. A giant fist seizes poor 
Pierrot ; and a cook almost as tall as the theatre, in red and black devilish 
costume, covers both with an * extinguisher' as big as a house. 

These absurdities raise a laugh for a moment, it is true ; but they can- 
not make a melancholy spirit cheerful, and you know I have so many 
causes for gloom which I cannot forget * 

Some evil constellation must now reign over us ; for certainly there are 
lucky and unlucky tides in man's life, and to know when they set in would 
be a great assistance to the steersman. The star which you tell me burns 
so brightly over your residence must have a hostile influence. One star, 

* It is a matter of history that even the true old German knights had contracted the bad 
habit of occasionally interlarding their discourse with French phrases. — Editor. 



166 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

however, shines benignly upon me, and that is your love. With that, 
would my life be extinguished. 

Change of scene seems to become more and more necessary to me, 
especially as there is little here to amuse or interest. After rain, sun- 
shine : — forward then, — and do you rouse me by your letters. Let them 
be cheering and invigorating by their own cheerfulness, for that is more 
important to me than all the intelligence, bad or good, they can contain. 
Nothino- is so terrible to my imagination as to think of you, at a distance, 
distressed or out of spirits. It is so great an art to suffer triumphantly — 
like a martyr ; and it is practicable when one suffers innocently, or for 
love of another. You, my dearest Julia, have known few other sufferings 
than these. Of myself I cannot speak so proudly. 

July 23rd. 

This morning I visited Bedlam. Nowhere are madmen — confined ones, 
that i s — better lodged. There is a pleasure-ground before the door of the 
palace, and nothing can be cleaner and more conveniently fitted up than 
the interior. As I entered the women's gallery, conducted by a very 
pretty young girl, who officiated as keeper, one of the patients, a woman 
of about thirty, looked at me for a long time very attentively, — then sud- 
denly coming up to me she said, " You are a foreigner : I know you, 
Prince ! Why did you not put on your uniform to come to see me ? that 
would have become you better. Ah, how handsome Charles used to look 
in his !" 

You may imagine my painful astonishment. "Poor thing !" said my 
guide, " she was seduced by some foreign prince, and every foreigner she 
sees she fancies is one. Sometimes she cries the whole day long, and will 
let nobody go near her : after that she is quite sensible again for weeks. 
She was very pretty, once, but fretting has spoiled all her beauty." 

I was greatly struck by a young man, evidently of respectable station 
and education, who was possessed by one fixed idea, — that he was a Stuart, 
and had therefore a lawful claim to the throne. I conversed with him for 
half an hour without being able to get him upon this subject. He always 
broke off cautiously, nay cunningly, and talked in a very interesting man- 
ner of other things, particularly of America, where he had travelled for a 
considerable time ; nor did he exhibit the slightest trace of insanity. Speak- 
ing of Walter Scott's novels, I several times mentioned the Pretender, 
which 1 thought would excite him to speak ; and at length said in a con- 
fidential tone, " I know you are a Stuart yourself." This seemed to alarm 
him ; and laying his finger on his lips, he whispered, " We must not speak 
of that here ; the triumph of justice can be brought about by time alone, 
but the light will soon shine forth." " I am going into Wales," replied I, 
(he is a native of the Principality,) " will you give me your father's ad- 
dress, that I may carry him your greetings ?" " With the greatest plea- 
sure," said he ; •" give me your pocket-book, and I will write it." I gave 

it him, and he wrote his real name, ; then pointing to it with a 

smile, he added, " That's the name under which my father passes there. — 
Adieu !" and with a gracious motion of the hand he left me. 

What a dreadful spectacle ! One single inveterate idea converts the 
most agreeable man into an incurable lunatic, costs him his freedom, and 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 107 

condemns him to the society of vulgar madness for life. What is unhappy 
man in conflict with physical evil, — and where, then, is the freedom of his 
will ? 

There was a foreign patient, whose conceits were more ridiculous, — if 
those of madness can ever be so ; — a German pedant and writer of tours, 
who joined me in looking about the house, of which he was a constant in- 
mate. He was incessantly taking notes. He addressed each of the patients 
at great length, and carefully committed their answers to paper, though 
they were often any thing but complimentary to him. Scarcely had he 
observed my conversation with the young man I have mentioned, when he 
came up to me, and besought me pressingly to let him see what that gentle- 
man had written in my pocket-book. I told him. " Oh excellent — sin- 
gular," said he, " perhaps a real Stuart ! I must inquire into it immediate- 
ly, — a secret of state perhaps, — who knows 1 Very remarkable. Ich 
emfehle mich unterthanigst." So saying, he strutted away, with an awk- 
ward, silly air, yet perfectly satisfied with himself, 

On my way home I met a number of funerals, which indeed in a gulf 
like London, where Death must be ever at work, is no wonder ; and yet I 
must always regard it as a bad omen, even though the superstition that 
deems it so belong rather to Bedlam than to a reasonable head. — With me 
it has some foundation. 

When I was very young I was once driving in a curricle through the 

town of J where I then resided. A long funeral procession met 

me : I was forced to stop ; and as my horses were shy and restive, I had 
some difficulty in holding them in, and at length became infected with 
their impatience. I broke through the train, and inconsiderately exclaim- 
ed, " The D — 1 take all this absurd funeral pomp ; I can't be detained by 
it any longer." I drove on ; and had scarcely gone fifty paces further, 
when a little boy darted out of a shop door, and ran with such rapidity be- 
tween the horses and the carriage that it was impossible to check them 
till the wheel had passed over the whole length of the poor child's body, 
and he lay lifeless on the pavement. You may imagine my mortal terror. 
I sprang out, raised the little fellow ; and a number of people were already 
gathered around us, when the mother rushed forward, rent my heart with 
her cries, and excited the people to take vengeance on me. I was obliged 
to harangue the crowd to allay the rising storm ; and after relating the 
manner of the accident, giving my name, and leaving money with the mo- 
ther, I succeeded, not without some difficulty, in regaining my carriage 
and escaping from the tumult. I was near the gate, to which you descend 
by a tolerably steep hill. 1 was so absorbed by the thought of the acci- 
dent which had just occurred, that I did not attend to the reins, — orje 
slipped out of my hand. The horses, already hurried and alarmed by the 
confusion, set off, and came in contact with a wagon, with such force that 
one of them was killed on the spot, and my curricle smashed to pieces. I 
was thrown out with great violence, and for a moment rendered senseless 
by the shock. On recovering, I found myself lying with my face pressed 
so close to the ground that I was almost stiffled. I felt, however, the 
plunging of a furious animal above me, and heard the thunder of blows 
which seemed to strike my head, and yet gave me but little pain. In the 
midst of all, I clearly distinguished the cries of several persons around, 
and the exclamation, " He is a dead man — shoot the horse instantly !" At 



168 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

these words I received a blow on the temple which entirely deprived me 
of sense. 

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on a mattrass in the middle 
of a miserable room : an old woman was washing the blood from my head 
and face, and a surgeon, busied with his instruments, was preparing to tre- 
pan me. " Oh, let the poor gentleman die in peace !" cried the woman 
compassionately ; and as I thought I felt distinctly that, spite of my ex- 
ternal wounds, I had received no internal injury, I happily found strength 
to resist the operation ; though the young man, who was an hospital pupil, 
was extremely eager to prove his skill — which, he encouragingly added, 
he had not yet had an opportunity of trying — upon my skull. I exerted 
all my remaining strength, ordered a carriage, asked for water and a 
looking-glass, in which, however, I could scarcely recognize myself, the 
greater part of the skin of my face being left in the high road. It was 
not till nature had replaced it by a new one, that my groom, — who was 
sitting by me at the time of the accident, and was thrown into a field by 
the road-side and but little hurt,— told me what strange circumstances had 
attended the accident. The pole of the curricle had splintered like a 
lance against the wagon : the light vehicle fell forwards, and I with it. 
The stump of the pole had stuck into the earth, and had fastened down 
my head. Upon me laid the horse entangled in the traces, making the 
most furious efforts to get free, and continually kicking with his hind feet 
against the broken pole, which thus became my sole preserver, by receiv- 
ing the blows which would otherwise have dashed my head into a hundred 
pieces. This lasted almost a quarter of an hour before they could disen- 
gage the horse. 

From that day I never liked meeting funerals: 

As postscript to these reminiscences of my past life, I must add one 
comical incident. The boy I ran over recovered completely, and six 
weeks after his accident and mine, his mother brought him to me with 
rosy cheeks and dressed in his Sunday clothes. As I kissed him and gave 
his mother a parting present, the poor woman exclaimed with tears of joy, 
" Oh, Sir, I wish my boy could be run over so every day of the week !" 

July 28th. 

It was a long time since I had visited the City, and I accordingly de- 
voted yesterday to it. As I am, in my quality of Teutonic knight, a beer- 
brewer, I turned my ' cab' to Barclay's brewery, which the vastness of its 
dimensions renders almost romantic, and which is one of the most curious 
sights in London. 

From twelve to fifteen thousand barrels, that is about twenty thousand 
quarts* of beer, are brewed here daily. Every thing is done by machinery, 
which is all set in motion by a single steam-engine. The -beer is boiled 
in four vats, each of which holds three hundred barrels. The hops are 
first put into the vat or cauldron dry, and kept stirring by a machine, that 
they may not burn. During this process the sweet-wort flows in upon 

* Fasser. Fass, a butt, barrel, tun, tub, &c. — Grosse Quart. I do not know whether 
these measures correspond to the English words, or whether I have used the appropriate 
technical expressions. — Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 169 

them. There is a curious apparatus for cooling the heer in hot weather ; 
— it is made to pass through a number of pipes like those of an organ, 
through which a stream of cold water is then let to flow, and so on, alter- 
nately. At last the beer flows into a barrel as high as a house, of which 
there are ninety-nine under gigantic sheds. You can't conceive the strange 
effect of seeing a vessel holding six hundred thousand quarts tapped for 
you to drink a glass of porter, which, ' par parenthese,' is excellent, and 
cold as ice. These barrels are covered with a little hill of fresh sand, and 
preserve the beer fresh and good for a twelvemonth. It is drawn off into 
smaller casks, and sent out to the consumer. The drawing off is effected 
with great rapidity by means of leathern pipes, as the smaller casks are 
arranged in readiness under the floor on which the great ones stand. 

A hundred and fifty horses, like elephants, one of which can draw a 
hundred hundred-weight, are daily employed in carrying out the beer. 

A single enormous chimney devours the smoke of the whole establish- 
ment ; and from the roof of the principal building you have a very fine 
panoramic view of London. 

I next proceeded to the West-India docks and warehouses, — an im- 
measurable work ; one of those at the sight of which the most cold-blooded 
spectator must feel astonishment, and a sort of awe at the greatness and the 
might of England. What a capital lies here in buildings, wares, and 
vessels ! The admirably excavated basin, which it took me half an hour 
to walk round, is thirty-six feet deep, and surrounded by sheds and ware- 
houses, some of which are five or six stories high : some of them are built 
entirely of iron, the foundations only being of stone. This mode of building 
has however been found to be dangerous, from the contraction and expan- 
sion of the metal. In these boundless depositories there was sugar enough 
to sweeten the whole adjoining basin, and rum enough to make half Eng- 
land drunk. Two thousand artisans and overseers are commonly employed 
daily, and the value of the goods here collected is estimated at twenty 
millions sterling ; exclusive of the stores, which are kept in great quantities 
in a storehouse, so that the breaking or spoiling of any of the tools delays 
the work only a few minutes. The number of well-contrived tools and 
machines is wonderful. 1 looked on with great pleasure while blocks of 
mahogany and other foreign woods, many larger than the largest oak, 
were lifted up like feathers, and deposited on drays or wagons as carefully 
as if they had been the most brittle ware. Everything is on a colossal 
scale. On each side of the basin lie rows of ships, most of them newly 
painted. There are two basins, one for import and the other for export. 
I was obliged to leave this interesting place sooner than I wished, as the 
entrance-gate and all the warehouses are closed at four o'clock. The gate- 
keeper does not take the slightest trouble to ascertain whether there is any 
one in the yard, so that it appeared to me one would have to bivouac there 
for the night if one missed the hour. The man very coolly assured me 
that if the King were there he would not wait a minute ; I made my escape 
therefore as quickly as I could. 

On my way home I passed a booth where a man was calling out that 
here were the famous German dwarf and his three dwarf children ; the 
living skeleton ; and, to conclude, the fattest girl that ever was seen. 1 
paid my shilling, and went in. After waiting a quarter of an hour, till five 
other spectators arrived, the curtain was drawn up, and the most impertinent 

22 



170 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

' charlatanerie' exhibited that ever I witnessed. The living skeleton was a 
very ordinary sized man, not much thinner than I. As an excuse for our 
disappointment, we were assured that when he arrived from France he was 
a skeleton, but that since he had eaten good English beef-steaks, it had been 
found impossible to check his tendency to corpulence. 

The fattest woman in the world was a perfect pendant to the skeleton. 
She was not fatter than the Queen of Virginia Water. 

Last came the so-called dwarfs — which were neither more nor leas than 
the little children of the ' Impressario,' stuck into a sort of bird-cage, their 
faces shaded, and only their hands and feet left free. With the former the 
little wretches made a horrible noise with great bells. — Here closed the 
exhibition: — an English hoax, which no Frenchman could have executed 
more burlesquely nor with more effrontery. 

July 29th. 

Since I became Mr. Deville's pupil I cannot help measuring the skulls of 
all my acquaintances with my eye, before I open myself to them ; and to- 
day, like the man in Kotzebue's comedy, I examined an English servant I 
was hiring, ' in optima forma.' Let us hope the result will not be similar, — 
for the line drawn through the ear gave good promise. And here it struck 
me that the common proverb (and how much popular truth do such often 
contain !) is perfectly in accordance with Deville's principle — " He has it 
behind the ear, beware of him!" (Er hat es hinter den Ohren, hiltet euch 
vor ihm /) 

Joking apart, I am perfectly convinced that, as with magnetism, so with 
craniology, people throw away the good with the bad* when they treat it 
as a mere chimera. It may admit of many modifications : but I have so 
fully proved the justice of the leading principles upon my own skull, that I 
should not think people at all ridiculous for paying some attention to it in 
educating their children — nor even for using it to aid their own self- 
knowledge. I, at least, have gained a more clear idea of myself by this 
means than I had before. 

As I had been writing all day, I took advantage of the mild and clear 
moonlight for my ride. 

The night was quite Italian, and the roads lighted to a great distance 
with lamps, within the region of which I remained, and rode for several 
hours in the town and suburbs. The view from Westminster-bridge was 
most striking. The numerous lights on board the vessels danced like 
Will-o'-the-Whisps, on the surface of the Thames ; and the many bridges 
spanned the noble stream as with arches of light. Westminster Abbey 
alone was without any artificial illumination. Only the loving moon, the 
betrothed of ruins and Gothic temples, caressed with her pale beams the 
stone pinnacles and ornaments, sought every deep nook with eager fondness, 
and silvered the long glittering windows ; while the roof and towers of the 
lofty building reared themselves, still and cold, in black colourless majesty, 
above the lights and the tumult of the city, into the deep blue firmament. 



* Laterally, Das Kind mit dem Bade verschutten — " To throw out the child with the bath ;" 
a common German proverb. — Transi,. 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 171 

The streets remain busy till midnight : nay, I even saw a boy of eight 
years old at the utmost, perfectly alone in a little child's carriage drawn 
by a large dog, driving along full trot, and without the slightest fear, 
among the latest carriages and stage-coaches. Such a thing can be seen 
only in England, where children are independent at eight, and hanged at 
twelve. 

But good morning, dear Julia ; it is time to go to bed. 

August 1st. 

The heat is still very oppressive — the earth is like an ash-heap ; and 
if the macadamized streets were not kept watered by a continual succes- 
sion of large water-carts, the dust would be insufferable. But this makes 
driving and riding pleasant still ; and though the fashionable time is over, 
shopping is very amusing : one is greatly tempted to buy more than one 
wants ; and as I have very little money just now, I am obliged to call in 
fancy to my aid to procure me all I covet for you and for myself. 

I sent you some time ago a description of a very original man, Sir L 

M . I was invited to his house to-day, to a most luxurious dinner, 

fixed so long beforehand that a diplomatic guest had been summoned 
across the seas, from Baden, by courier, a month ago. He arrived punc- 
tually on the very morning, and seemed to have brought a " British and 
foreign" appetite with him. He had not forgotten to load himself with 
continental delicacies, to which, as well as to the numerous excellent 
wines, the most exemplary justice was done. One had need have a strong 
head to withstand such things, but the air really makes a great deal of 
food and strong drink more necessary than with us. A man who could 
at first hardly drink a glass of English claret, (that is, mixed with brandy,) 
after a time finds a whole bottle of port agree very well with his health, 
and with the English fogs. But if our palates were especially consulted 
at this repast, there was no want of salt in the conversation. An officer 
who had served in the Birman war told us many interesting details of 
that people. 

Another man related an Irish bull, which appeared to me the best I 
had heard — inasmuch as the blunder was no less than a man's cutting off 
his own head. The fact is, however, as he asserted, authentic, and oc- 
curred as follows : — 

The peasants of Ulster use an enormous scythe, with the end of the 
handle sharpened to a point, that they may stick it into the ground. 
When they go home from work, they carry these formidable weapons 
over their shoulders, in such a manner that the edge of the scytbe lies 
round their neck. Two peasants were sauntering home by the side of a 
river, when they spied a large salmon with his head hidden under the roots 
of an old tree, and his tail lying out into the stream. " Look, Paddy," said 
one, " at the stupid salmon ! he thinks because he can't see us that we 
can't see him : if I had but my pike I would let him know the difference." 
" Och !" said the other, creeping down the bank, " sure the scythe-handle 
will do for that — here goes !" And so saying, he struck at the salmon ; 
and hit him truly enough, — only, unfortunately, with the same stroke he 
took off his own head, which fell plump into the water before the eyes of 
his astonished comrade. For a long time he could not understand how it 



172 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

was that Paddy's head fell off so suddenly, and still maintains that there 
was something not quite as it should be in the business. 

I closed the day with the English Opera. At the end of the first act a 
mine falls in and buries the principal persons of the piece alive. In the 
last scene of the second act they reappear in the bowels of the earth, nearly 
starved indeed, having lain there three days, and utterly exhausted. This, 
however, proves no impediment to the prima donna singing a long Polonaise 
air, to which there is a chorus with trumpets, " Ah, we are lost, all hope 
is gone !" but, oh miracle ! the rocks fall asunder again, and open a wide 
entrance to the light of day. All distress, and with it the distressing 
nonsense of the piece, was at an end. 

August 2nd. ' 

Yesterday's debauch called my attention to an organ which Mr. Deville 
did not include in his list — the organ of' gourmandise,' which immediately 
confines on that of murder, and is in fact, like that, a species of destruc- 
tiveness. I find I possess it in a considerable degree, and I only wish all 
the bumps and knobs on my skull gave as innocent and agreeable results. 
It indicates not the mere vulgar desire for eating and drinking, but enables 
its possessor to estimate the delicate fragrance of wine, or the inventive 
genius of a cook. It is inimical to human happiness only when found in 
conjunction with a sentimental stomach, — which happily does not appear 
to be the case with me. 

To-day I saw an exhibition of an entire gallery of pictures embroidered 
with the needle, and the work of one person: their excellence is really 
surprising. The name of the artist, the most patient of women, is Miss 
Linwood. At a little distance the copies are very like the originals, and 
the enormous prices she gets for them shows that their merit is recogniz- 
ed. I heard that one such piece of tapestry, after Carlo Dolce, sold for 
three thousand guineas. There was a portrait of Napoleon during the 
Consulate, which must have been very like him at that time, and was re- 
garded by some Frenchmen present with great admiration. 

I next went to see the solar microscope, the magnifying power of which 
is a million. What it shows is really enough to drive a man of lively ima- 
gination mad. Nothing can be more horrible, — no more frightful devilish 
figures could possibly be invented, — than the hideous, disgusting water 
animalculse (invisible to the naked eye, or even to glasses of inferior 
power,) which we daily swallow. They looked like damned souls darting 
about their filthy pools with the rapidity of lightning, while every motion 
and gesture seemed to bespeak deadly hate, horrid torture, warfare, and 
death. 

I was seized with a sight-seeing fit, and wished to efface the shocking 
impressions of that infernal world by something more agreeable, I visited 
three panoramas, Rio Janeiro, Madrid, and Geneva. 

The first is a singular and paradisaically luxuriant country, differing 
completely from the forms and appearances of that which surround us. 
The second, in its treeless sandy plain, looks the picture of blank sta- 
tionariness and of the Inquisition : burning heat broods over the whole 
scene like an ' auto da fe.' The third appeared to me like an old acquaint- 






IRELAND AND FRANCE. 173 

ance ; and with a full heart 1 looked long at the immoveable and unchange- 
able fatherlandish friend, — the majestic Mont Blanc. 

August 8th. 

Canning is dead. A man in the plenitude of his intellectual power, 
who had but a few weeks ago arrived at the goal of his active life, who 
had risen to be the ruler of England, and, in that quality, unquestionably 
the most influential man in Europe ; endowed with a spirit of fire that 
would have guided the reins he held with a mighty hand, and a soul capa- 
ble of embracing the good of his species from a station more elevated than 
any to which human ambition could raise him. 

One shock has overthrown this proud structure of many years. And 
this high-spirited man was doomed to end his days by a sudden and tragic 
death, amid fearful sufferings, the victim of a relentless Destiny, who steps 
on with iron foot, treading down all that comes in her way, heedless whe- 
ther it be the young seedling, the swelling blossom, the lordly tree, or the 
withering plant, that she crushes. 

What will be the consequences of his death ? Years must elapse be- 
fore that will be seen ; perhaps it will hasten on a conclusion which seems 
to threaten us on many sides, and to which only a large-minded, libe- 
ral, and enlightened statesman, like Canning, were capable of giving" 
unity and a favourable direction. It is not impossible that the party 
which now so indecently and unfeelingly triumphs at his untimely death, 
may be the first to be placed in real and imminent peril by that very 
event ; for not in vain has Lord Chesterfield said, with a far-seeing pro- 
phetic eye, " Je prevois que dans cent ans d'ici les metiers de gentilhomme 
et de moine ne seront plus de la moitie aussi lucratifs qu'ils le sont au- 
jourd'hui." 

But what do I care about politics ? Could I but always preserve the 
due equipoise in myself, I should be content. Meantime Canning's death 
is now, of course, the talk of the town, and the details of his sufferings are 
truly afflicting. The Saints, who hated him for his liberal opinions, try 
to set it abroad that during his physical torments he was converted — what 
they call converted. One of his friends, on the other hand, who was by 
his bed-side for a considerable time, knew not how sufficiently to eulogize 
his stoical courage, and the serenity with which he bore his cruel fate ; 
— occupied to the last moment with plans for the weal of England and of 
humanity, and anxiously desiring to impress them once more on the heart 
of the King. 

As the grave and the gay, the tragic and the frivolous, shake hands 
here below, a very curious novel divides attention with this great cala« 
mity. It is remarkable for its rather ' baroque,' but often witty and faith- 
ful delineations of continental manners. I give you the description of the 
beginning of a ball at Ems, as a sample of the observations of Englishmen 
on our manners and customs. 

" The company at the Archduke's fete was most select : that is to say, 
it consisted of every single person who was then at the baths: those who 
had been presented to His Highness having the privilege of introduc- 
ing any number of their friends : and those who had no friend to intro« 



174 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

duce them, purchased tickets at an enormous price from Cracowsky 
— the wily Polish intendant. The entertainment was most imperial; 
no expense and no exertion were spared to mako the hired lodging-house 
look like an hereditary palace; and for a week previous to the great 
evening, the whole of the neighbouring town of Wisbaden,* the little 
capital of the duchy, has been put under contribution. What a harvest 
for Cracowsky ! — What a commission from the restaurateur for supply- 
ing the refreshments !— What a per-centage on hired mirrors and dingy 
hangings ! 

" The Archduke, covered with orders, received every one with the great- 
est condescension, and made to each of his guests a most flattering speech. 
His suite, in new uniforms, simultaneously bowed directly the flattering 
speech was finished. 

" ' Madame von Furstenburg, I feel the greatest pleasure in seeing 
you. My greatest pleasure is to be surrounded by my friends. Madame 
von Furstenburgh, I trust that your amiable and delightful family are 
quite well." [The party passed on.] — ' Cravatischeff!' continued His 
Highness, inclining his head round to one of his aid-de-camps ; ' Cravatis- 
cheff! a very fine woman is Madame von Furstenburg. There are few 
women whom I more admire than Madame von Furstenburg.' " 

" ' Prince Salvinski, I feel the greatest pleasure in seeing you. My 
greatest pleasure is to be surrounded by my friends. Poland honours no 
one more than Prince Salvinski.' — ' Cravatischeff"! a remarkable bore is 
Prince Salvinski. There are few men of whom I have a greater terror 
than Prince Salvinski.' " 

" ' Baron von Konigstein, I feel the greatest pleasure in seeing you. 
My greatest pleasure is to be surrounded by my friends. Baron von 
Konigstein, I have not yet forgot the story of the fair Venetian.' — 
'Cravatischeff! an uncommonly pleasant fellow is Baron von Konigstein. 
There are few men whose company I more enjoy than Baron von Kon- 
igstein's.' " 

" ' Count von Altenburgh, I feel the greatest pleasure in seeing you. 
My greatest pleasure is to be surrounded by my friends. You will not 
forget to give me your opinion of my Austrian troop.' — ' Cravatischeff! a 
very good billiard-player is Count von Altenburgh. There are few men 
whose play I'd sooner bet upon than Count von Altenburgh's.' " 

" Lady Madeleine Trevor, I feel the greatest pleasure in seeing you. 
My greatest pleasure is to be surrounded by my friends. — Miss Fane, your 
servant — Mr. Sherborne — Mr. St. George — Mr. Grey.' — ' Cravatischeff! 
a most splendid woman is Lady Madeleine Trevor. There is no woman 
whom I more admire than Lady Madeleine Trevor ; — and, Cravatischeff! 
Miss Fane, too ! a remarkably fine girl is Miss Fane.' " 

Stinging enough, is it not, Julia 1 I have met with kw descriptions that 
have amused me more : and my translation, — extremely good, is it not ? 
There are few translations that please me more than my own. 

In a serious style, too, the Author is not amiss.")" 



* Misspelt in the original. — Transl. 

t Here follows a short passage which I have not been able, on a hurried search, to find.— 
Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE- ' 175 

More practically does the celebrated Smollett write to a friend : "I am 
old enough to have seen and convinced myself that we are all the playthings 
of Destiny, and that it often depends on a trifle not more important than the 
toss-up of a halfpenny, whether a man should raise himself to riches and 
honours, or pine away in misery and want till he dies. 

August 15th. 

I daily inspect the workmen in St. James's Park, formerly only a sorS 
of meadow for cows, and now converted into beautiful gardens, according 
to a plan of Mr. Nash's. The water is also much better distributed. I 
acquire a great deal of technical information here, and admire the judicious 
division and series of the work, the ingenious modes of transport, the 
moveable iron railways, &c. 

It is characteristic, that while the laws which protect private property 
are so strict that a man who climbs over a wall into a garden runs the risk 
of being hanged, or otherwise grievously punished ; that if it occurs in the 
night the proprietor may shoot him dead ; — with the public, wherever they 
have the shadow of a claim, it is necessary to go to work as gingerly as 
you would with a raw egg. This park is the property of the Crown, but 
has been open to the public from remote ages ; and Government does not 
dare to close it, even temporarily, notwithstanding the improvements which 
the King is now carrying on, (at the nation's cost, it is true.) A board 
is put up on which is inscribed literally as follows : — " The public are 
most respectfully requested, during the operations which are designed for 
the increase of their own gratification, not to injure the carts and tools of 
the workmen, and to avoid as much as possible the part where the men 
are at work." Very little attention, however, is paid to this respectful 
and reasonable petition, and the carts and barrows which lie empty when 
the men leave work are often used by the boys to wheel each other about, 
and to play all sorts of tricks with. The girls seesaw on the long planks, 
and many little wretches amuse themselves with throwing stones in the 
water just at the very spot where ladies are standing, who are of course so 
splashed as to be obliged to hasten home. This brutal love of mischief is 
quite peculiar to the English people, and forms the sole apology for the 
grudging inhumanity with which the opulent classes shut up their charm- 
ing pleasure-grounds. It is worth inquiring, however, whether the morose- 
ness of the rich was not the cause, instead of the effect, of the mischievous 
temper of the poor. It is difficult for people on the Continent to imagine 
to what a pitch it goes. 

The anxiety with which the rich English shut up their property from 
the profaning eyes of the stranger is sometimes truly amusing, but may 
chance to be painful. I was riding one day in the neighbourhood of Lon- 
don, — and attracted by the sight of a fine house and grounds, I asked the 
porter who stood at the lodge, whether he would allow me to look at the 
gardens? He had many scruples, but at last he opened the gate, taking 
charge of my horse during the time. I might have walked about for a quarter 
of an hour, and was just looking at the neatly-kept pleasure-ground, when 
a somewhat fat personage in his shirt appeared at a window of the house ; 
he seemed to be running about in great distress, but at last threw open the 



170 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

window with great vehemence, and whilst I heard the violent ringing of 
a large bell, cried out to me with half-suppressed rage, " Qui etes-vous, 
Monsieur? que cherchez-vous ici ?" I thought it too ridiculous to shout 
back the answer from such a distance, and soon found it unnecessary; for 
a number of servants, alarmed by the ringing of the bell, flocked together 
from all directions, one of whom now repeated to me the question ' ex 
officio.' In a few words 1 let the proprietor know by him that I was a 
foreigner who had been attracted by fondness for gardening ; that I had 
not climbed over the wall, as he seemed to believe, but had entered through 
the usual entrance, where my horse was still waiting ; that 1 was heartily 
sorry for having caused him such a shock in his illness, and only wished 
that it might have no serious consequences, at the same time assuring him 
of my best respects, and that I would immediately leave the forbidden 
garden. I soon reached my horse, and rode off laughing, for this was the 
gay side of the affair. About a fortnight after, I passed by chance near 
the same house : I approached the lodge again, and rang the bell ; another 
man appeared ; and in a mischievous fit 1 inquired after the health of his 
master, and whether I could be permitted to see the garden ? " God for- 
bid !" was the answer, " on no account !" I now heard from the servant, 
to my sincere grief, that the poor fellow, his predecessor, had been dis- 
missed with his wife and children, though he had been in the service of 
the family for many years, merely for having let a stranger enter with- 
out permission. Nevertheless this severe gentleman is one of the pa- 
tent liberals of England. What would an illiberal one have done? 

The walks and rides in the neighbourhood are now very inviting again, 
for autumn has set in early. The scorched grass has resumed its coat 
of bright green, and the trees hold their foliage longer and fresher than 
with us, though they begin to change their colour earlier. Winter comes 
late, often not at all, to throw its broad white mantle over them. The 
mowing of the grass, and cleaning and sweeping of the gardens and 
grounds never cease ; indeed, as autumn and winter are ' the seasons' 
in the country, that is just the time when most care is bestowed upon 
them. 

London is deserted by the fashionables ; and that with such affectation, 
that many who are obliged to remain on business positively conceal them- 
selves. The streets in the west end of the town are like those of a desert- 

f*(\ f*itv ^ : ^ ^ ^ ^" ^ ^ 

They are still infested with beggars, and with that most affecting sort 
of beggars who ply their melancholy trade in the night. Not only En- 
glish women, but foreigners here contract this shocking custom. I was 
really made almost desperate by a withered French woman, of whom 1 
could not get rid, even by the usual shilling : — " Encore un moment," 
exclaimed she ; " je ne demande rien, c'est seulement pour parler Fran- 
cais, pour avoir une conversation raisonnable, dont ces Anglais ne sont pas 
capables." 

In the present solitude one has at least as much time to oneself as one 
likes ; one can work, and read the legion of newspapers at one's leisure. 
The absurdities which daily appear in them on foreign affairs are almost 
incredible. To-day I found the following article : " The admiration of the 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 177 

Emperor Alexander for Napoleon was for a long time boundless. It is 
well known that at the theatre at Erfuth, when Talma uttered the words 

4 L'amitie d'un grand homme est un bienfait des Dieux,' 

Alexander leaned over to Napaleon and said, ' Ces paroles ont ete ecrites 
pour moi.' — The following anecdote is probably less known. We can 
vouch for the truth of it. Alexander one day expressed to Duroc the in- 
tense desire he had to possess a pair of breeches of his great ally the Em- 
peror Napoleon. Duroc sounded his master on this very extraordinary 
subject. Napoleon laughed heartily. ' Oh,' cried he, ' donnez lui tout ce 
qu'il veut, pourvu qu'il me reste une paire pour changer.' This is au- 
thentic. We are also assured that Alexander, who was very superstitious, 
never wore any other breeches than Napoleon's in the field, during the 
campaigns of 1812-13." 

The day ended very pleasantly for me with the arrival of my friend 

L , for whom I now leave you, and close this letter (which is far 

enough from being amusing or instructive in proportion to its dreadful 
length,) with the old assurance, which to you I know will want no charm 
of novelty, that, far or near, you are ever next to my heart. 

Your faithful L . 



LETTER XVII. 

London, Aug. 20th, 1827. 

Dear and faithful friend, 

Curiosity led me again to-day to the Tunnel. I went in the diving- 
bell down to the bed of the river, and spent half an hour there, looking at 
the process of stopping the breach with sand-bags and earth. Excepting 
a rather violent pain in my ears, I found it more comfortable in our metal 
box, the deeper we sank. It has two thick glass windows at the top : and 
near them two leathern pipes which admit fresh air. The bell has no 
floor, — only a narrow board on which to set your feet, and two strong 
benches on the sides. It is lighted by lanterns. The workmen had capi- 
tal water-boots, which resist the wet four-and-twenty hours ; and I was 
particularly delighted at Writing the address of the maker in my pocket- 
book among the fishes, " auf des Stromes tiefunsterstem Grunde." 

After having escaped safe and sound from the water, I was near suffer- 
ing a sad calamity from fire. I had gone for a minute into another room, 
and a candle which had burned down in the socket set fire to the papers on 
my writing-table : before I could extinguish it, many things very interest- 
ing to me were destroyed. Copies of letters, prints and drawings, an 
unfinished novel, (what a pity !) numberless addresses, a part of my jour- 
nal, — all became the prey of the flames. I could not help laughing when I 
saw that all the receipts were left untouched, while the unpaid bills were 

23 



178 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 






Consumed to the last vestige. That's what I call an obliging fire. The 
great packet of your letters is burnt round the edges, so that they look 
as if they were written on mourning paper : — right again, for letters be- 
tween people who love each other, always mourn over the necessity for 
writing them. The Vienna courier you wot of, who came charged with 
a hundred thousand blessings, is turned negro ; but his life is happily saved, 
and his cinq-foil leaf is in full preservation. I send him back to you as a 
witness and a messenger of the fire. 

August 2\st. 

There is such an extent and variety of • terra incognita' in this illimit- 
able London, that with no other guide than chance one is sure to fall upon 
something new and interesting. In this way 1 found myself to-day in 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, a noble square, almost a German mile from my 
lodging, surrounded with fine buildings, and adorned with lofty trees and 
beautiful turf. The most considerable edifice is that of the College of 
Surgeons, and contains a very interesting museum. One of the gentlemen 
showed me the establishment with great civility. The first thing which 
claimed my attention was a very pretty little mermaid which had been 
exhibited here for money some years ago, and was afterwards sold for a 
thousand pounds, when it was discovered that she was a deceptive contri- 
vance made out of a small ourang-outang and a salmon, joined together in 
a most workmanlike manner. The existence of such creatures remains, 
therefore, as much a problem as ever. Near to it stood a real large 
ourang-outang, who lived here for a long time, and performed many do- 
mestic services in the house. Mr. C (so my informant was called) 

assured me that he must regard this animal as of a distinct genus, nearer 
to man than to the ape. He had long and attentively observed this indi- 
vidual, and had found in him the most certain proofs of reflection and com- 
bination, evidently far beyond the reach of instinct. Thus, he remarked 
tfiat Mr. Dick (as he called him) felt in gentlemen's pockets, if he were 
permitted, or eatables ; but if his search was unsuccessful, carefully replac- 
ed every thing that did not answer his purpose, instead of throwing it away 
or letting it fall, as all other monkeys do. He was so sensitive to the 
slightest mark of displeasure, that he was depressed and unhappy for days 
after being unkindly spoken to. He was observed, too, to try of his own 
accord to assist the servants, if he saw them unusually oppressed with 
work. 

There were some preparations exhibiting almost incredible cases of re- 
coveries from wounds. The most extraordinary among them was the 

breast of a man (which Mr. C showed me, preserved in spirits,) 

who had been so completely spitted by the shaft of a carriage, that he 
could only be dragged from it by the efforts of several persons. The shaft 
had passed close to the heart and lungs, which, however, it only gently 
forced aside, without doing them the least injury, and had broken the ribs 
before and behind. After the man had been extricated from his horrible 
situation, he had strength enough left to walk up two flights of stairs, and 
to he down on a bed. He lived fourteen years after the accident, sound 
and well ; but the surgeons had kept their eye upon him, and got posses- 
sion of his body as soon as he was dead. They have placed him in their 



IRELAND AM) FKA:VCE. 179 

museum, together with the shaft, which had been kept in his family as a 
relic. 

1 was struck by a small, beautifully-formed greyhound, which was built 
up in a -cellar, and w;is found, after the lapse of many years, perfectly 
dried. He looked as if carved out of gray sandstone, and presented an 
affecting image of resignation, — rolled up as if in sleep, and with such a 
mournful expression ofhis little head, that one could not look at it without 
pity. A cat, starved and dried in the same manner, looking on the con- 
trary savage and fiendish* Thus, thought I, is gentleness beautiful even 
in suffering ! It was a picture of the good and the wicked in a like situa- 
tion ; and yet how different the effects ! 

I must mention the skeleton of the Frenchman who was exhibited here 
as ' the living skeleton,' his bones being really covered with little more 
than skin. His stomach was smaller than that of a new-born child ; and 
the unhappy creature was condemned to a prolonged starvation, for he 
could not eat more than half a cup of broth a-day. He was twenty years 
old, — died in London, and sold himself, while yet alive, to the museum. 

As I was driving home, I had taken a quantity of small money in 
change at the turnpikes, and I amused myself in an odd humour by letting 
a penny fall quietly out of the carriage every time I saw a poor, ragged 
person. Not one of them perceived it ; all passed over it. And just so 
does Fortune with us ! She drives continually through the world in her 
chariot, and throws out her gifts blindfold. How seldom do any of us see 
them, or stoop to pick them up ! We are generally seeking elsewhere at 
the lucky moment. 

On my return home, I found a real gift of fate, and a very precious one, 
— a long letter from ycu * * 

Herr von S , whom you mention as one of the recent arrivals at 

the baths, is an old acquaintance of mine, a strange original whom we all 
liked, and yet could not resist making a butt of, and who was continually 
meeting with adventures the most ludicrous and the most serious. You 
have seen what a caricature he looks, and that he is of all men the least 
formed to be a man ' a bonnes fortunes.' When a young lieutenant, how- 
ever, he was madly in love with one of the most beautiful women of her 

time, Baroness B ; and one evening, on her torturing him to the 

utmost by some biting jest, he ran a sword through his body before her 
eyes. The weapon went through his lungs, so that a candle held to the 
wound was blown out. Nevertheless our tragic madman was cured, and 

Frau von B was so touched by this proof of passion, that she became 

less cruel to so desperate a lover. * * * 

Salthill, August 25th. 

I have at length left town with L , who will accompany me for 

some days, after which I shall continue my travels alone. The first rest- 
ing place is a delightful inn, like a gentleman's villa, in the neighbourhood 
of Windsor. The prettiest veranda festooned with roses and all sorts of 
creepers, and adorned with a quantity of flowers in pots, covers the whole 
front ; and a pleasure-ground and flower-garden, in exquisite order, stretch 
before my window. From hence I have a noble view of the gigantic Cas- 



180 LETTERS OK ENGLAND, 

tie in the distance, which, set in a frame of two massy horse-chestnut- 
trees, gleamed like a fairy palace in the evening sun. The long rain had 
painted every thing emerald-green, and the sweet fresh country has the 
most benign influence on my mind and spirits. I can talk of you too, my 
good Julia, to L , whose society is very agreeable to me. To-mor- 
row we mean to see a multitude of things. This evening, as it was late, 
we contented ourselves with a ramble in the fields. 

Avgust 26/A. 

Early in the morning we drove to Stoke Park, the residence of a grand- 
son of the celebrated Quaker, William Penn. In the house is preserved a 
bit of the tree under which he concluded the treaty with Indian chiefs. 

The park is fine, and contains the greatest variety of deer either L 

or I had ever seen, — black, white, striped, mottled, black with white spots 
on the forehead, and brown with white feet. The park and garden, though 
beautiful, presented nothing remarkable. 

This we found in Dropmore, the seat of Lord Grenville, where the most 
extraordinary trees and an enchanting flower-garden excited all our atten- 
tion. It was more properly two or three gardens ; — in richness of flowers, 
really unique ; the beds partly cut in the turf, partly surrounded with 
gravel. Each bed contained only one sort of flower, which threw an in- 
describable richness of colour over the whole picture. Countless geraniums 
of every sort and colour, with many other flowers we hardly know, or of 
which we possess at most only single specimens, were arranged in large 
and splendid masses. The colours too were so admirably grouped that the 
eye rested on them with extreme delight. 

Yet a great part of the park consisted only of barren soil with heather, 
— just like that of our woods. The turf was dry and scorched, yet the 
high cultivation gave to the whole an air of great beauty, and confirmed 
me in my persuasion that with money and patience every soil may be 
overcome, — climate alone cannot. 

After we had seen another park, which commanded some remarkably 
fine views, we drove to Windsor to see the new part of the Castle ' en 
detail.' Unfortunately, almost at the same minute the King came up with 
his suite, in five phaetons drawn by poneys ; so that we were obliged to 
wait more than an hour till he drove off again, and we were permitted to 
enter. 

In the interval we visited Eton- College, an old establishment for edu- 
cation founded by Henry the Sixth. Its exterior is that of a vast and 
handsome Gothic building with a church attached to it ; its interior, of a 
simplicity hardly exceeded by our village schools. Bare white walls, 
wooden benches, carved with the names of the scholars who have stu- 
died here, (among which are those of Fox, Canning, and other cele- 
brated men*) are all that distinguish the room in which the best born 
youth of England are educated. According to the rules of the founda- 
tion, the King's scholars have nothing day after day but mutton. What 
could the royal founder propose to himself by this singular law? The 
library is very handsomely decorated, and contains some interesting manu- 
scripts. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 181 

On our return from Eton the King had driven away, and Mr. Wyat- 
ville his architect, under whose direction the new part of the Castle is 
erecting, had the kindness to give us detailed information about every 
part. It is a vast work, and the only one of its kind in England, which is 
executed not only at a great cost and with technical skill, but with un- 
common taste, nay genius. The grandeur and magnificence, of the Castle, 
which, though not half finished, has cost three millions of our money, 
are truly worthy of a King of England. Situated on a hill above the 
town, and commanding a beautiful view, while it presents a noble object 
from every side, its position gives it an immense advantage. Its histori- 
cal interest, its high antiquity, and its astonishing vastness and extent, 
unite to render it single in the world. 

The magnificence of the interior corresponds with the exterior. Each 
of the separate panes of glass in the huge Gothic windows cost twelve 
pounds sterling, and the eye is dazzled with vel>et, silk, and gilding. A 
high terrace on the side of the king's chamber, which forms hot-house's in 
the inside, and on the outside looks only like a high abrupt wall in the 
stern character of the rest of the building, encloses the most charming 
garden and pleasure-ground. The four great gates into the castle yard 
are so admirably contrived, that each encloses one of the most interest- 
ing points of the landscape as in a frame. 

All the recent additions are, as I have already mentioned, so perfectly 
executed, that they are hardly to be distinguished from the old part ; and 
I cannot blame the architect for having faithfully imitated even the less 
tasteful details. On the other hand, I must confess that the internal de- 
corations, spite of all their gorgeousness, appeared to me to leave much to 
wish for. They are enormously overloaded in parts, and are not always 
either in keeping with the character of the building, or calculated to pro- 
duce an agreeable effect. 

August 28th. 

left me yesterday, — sooner than he had intended. I am ex- 



tremely sorry for it ; for so agreeable and friendly a companion doubles 
every pleasure. I afterwards drove with an acquaintance of the Guards, 

to St. Leonard's Hill, belonging to Field-marshal Lord H , to whom 

E had given me a letter. 

The weather, which had been overcast, and from time to time rainy, 
was splendid ,* scarcely a cloud in the sky. On no more beautiful day 
could I see a more beautiful place than St. Leonard's Hill. These giant 
trees ; this fresh wood, full of variety ; these enchanting views, both far 
and near; this delightful house, with the most lovely of all flower-gar- 
dens ; this luxuriant vegetation, and this delicious retirement, from 
which, as from behind a curtain, you look out upon a world of diver- 
sified beauty lying in the valley beneath, — form a whole which has not 
its equal in England. The possessors are a very agreeable old couple, 
unfortunately without children to whom to transmit this paradise. The 
old lord seemed much pleased at my enthusiasm for the beauties of the 
place, and invited me to spend the following day, which I accepted with 
great pleasure. To-day I was engaged to dine with my friend Captain 



182 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

B at the Guards' mess at Windsor, where I passed the evening, from 

six o'clock till midnight. 

At an early hour in the morning I was summoned by Lord H , 

who is Ranger of Windsor Park, and wished to show it me before the 
King made his appearance. As soon as he rides out, the private part of 
the ground is hermetically sealed to every one, without exception, who 
does not belong to his own invited company. I was rather late ; the 
kind-hearted old lord scolded me a little, and made me instantly get into 
a landau drawn by four noble horses, in which we rolled rapidly through 
the high beech woods. 

The King has had several roads cut, for his own special and peculiar 
use, through the most interesting parts of his immense park of Windsor. 
We drove along one of them ; and in half an hour reached the royal 
stables, where the celebrated giraffe is kept. Here, unhappily, we heard 
that the King's carriages had been ordered, and indeed they stood 
already harnessed in the yard. There were seven, of various forms, 
but all with very low wheels, almost as light as children's carriages, and 
drawn by little poneys; the King's with four, which he drives himself, 
— the others with two : most of the poneys were of different colours. 

Lord H beheld these equipages with dismay. He was afraid the 

King might meet us, and feel ' mal a son aise' at the sight of unexpect- 
ed strangers — for the monarch's tastes are singular enough. It is un- 
pleasant to him to see a strange face, or indeed a human being of any 
kind whatsoever, within his domain ; and the Park is consequently (with 
the exception of the high road which crosses it,) a perfect solitude. The 
King's favourite spots are, for further security, thickly surrounded by 
screens of wood, and plantations are daily laid out to add to the privacy 
and concealment. In many places where the lay of the ground would 
enable you to get a glimpse of the sanctuary within, three stages of fence 
are planted one behind the other. 

We hastened accordingly to secure a sight of the giraffe, which was led 
out before us by two Moors who had accompanied her from Africa. A 
wonderful creature indeed ! You know her form ; but nothing can give 
an idea of the beauty of her eyes. Imagine something midway between 
the eye of the finest Arab horse, and the loveliest Southern girl, with long 
and coal-black lashes, and the most exquisite beaming expression of 
tenderness and softness, united to volcanic fire. The giraffe is attached to 
man, and is extremely ' gentle' and good-natured. Her appetite is good, 
for she daily sucks the milk of three cows who were lying near her. She 
uses her long bright-blue tongue like a trunk, in which way she took from 
me my umbrella, which she liked so much that she would not give it up 
again. Her walk was somewhat ungainly, from having sprained her leg 
on board ship ; but the Africans assured us that when in perfect health 

she is very swift-footed.' Lord H hurried off, for fear of the King ; 

and after passing through a thickly-planted part of the pleasure-ground 
attached to the ' Cottage,' which we only saw from a distance, we directed 
our course to Virginia Water, the King's favourite haunt. It is a large, 
artificial, but very natural-looking lake, on which His Majesty almost daily 
fishes. 

I was not a little surprised to see the whole country here assume a new 



IRELAND AKD FRANCE. 183 

character, and one very uncommon in England, — that of my beloved 
Fatherland : — iir-and pine-wood intermingled with oaks and alders; and 
under tbot our heather, and even our sand, in which this year's plantations 
were completely dry and withered. I could have given the King's 
gardeners some useful hints about planting in sand, for I convinced myself 
that they do not at all understand the treatment of that sort of soil. — A 
little frigate lay rocking on the lake, on whose banks were various little 
devices, — Chinese and Moorish houses executed with taste and not ca- 
ricatured. The haste with which we drove along rendered it only possible 
to see things in a transient, and for the most part distant manner. I was, 
however, very glad to have gained at least a general idea of the whole. 

My venerable host climbed up on the seat of the carriage, and stood 
there, supported by his wife and me, to look about whether the King might 
not be somewhere in sight ; nor was he perfectly tranquil till the gate of 
the sanctuary closed upon us. 

On our way back we saw the King's hunters — beautiful animals, as you 
may suppose, — and a peculiar breed of small elegant hounds, which are 
not to be met with out of England. We returned with good appetites for 
dinner, where I found several guests. Our hostess is a very agreeable 
woman, and as ' parkomane' as myself. All the noble trees in front of the 
house, between which glimpses of the distant landscape appear like sepa- 
rate pictures, were planted by herself forty years ago, and from that time 
to this only two have been removed. Every day convinces me more and 
more that the wide unbroken prospects which are here almost prohibited, 
destroy all illusion. With the exception of some few very old parks, you 
find hardly a house in England the view from which is not broken by 
scattered trees. Drawings deceive you, because the main object of the 
draftsman generally is to show the architecture and size of the building, 
and he consequently leaves out the trees. 

A most useful contrivance in this garden was a gigantic umbrella as 
large as a little tent, with an iron spike at the bottom to stick into the 
ground. You could thus establish yourself in any spot shaded from the 
sun. 

I gladly accepted an invitation from my friendly host for the following 
day, to meet the ladies of honour (Hofdamen*) of the Queen of Wiir- 
temburg. After dinner we walked again, to see a cottage in the low 
ground of the park. Enclosed on every side by hill and wood, it forms a 
charming contrast to the handsome villa on the height. Rode home 
(B and I) by brilliant star-light. 

August 29tk. 

After paying a visit to Mrs. C in Windsor, I returned to Lord 

II ' s, enjoying with new delight the noble oakwoods of his park, at 

the entrance of which, the prettiest lodge, tastefully built of trunks and 
branches of trees, and overgrown with roses, is a sort of index to the 
lovely character of the whole. I found a large party assembled ; — the 

* I do not know the exact equivalent of these titles. Hofdamen, literally is Court-ladies. 
— Transl. 



184 • LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

principal lady of honour (Oberhofmeisterin,) two ladies in waiting (Hof- 
da/nen,) and two equerries of the Queen of Wiirtemburg, — all German : 

le Marquis de H , a Frenchman, with two sons and a daughter, (the 

latter a true ' Parisienne ;') an English clergyman, and another foreign 
nobleman. 

The French party have judiciously put forward their cousinship with 
the childless Peer, are very kindly received, live in the cottage in the 
valley which I described yesterday, and have expectations of inheriting 
this noble property, — so that the little French girl is already regarded as 
' a good match.' 

The most interesting person to me in the whole company, however, 
was the Countess herself. She is a most amiable old lady, full of digni- 
fied courtesy, united to a very agreeable turn of mind. Sh6 has seen 
much of life, and relates what she has seen in the most interesting man- 
ner. She told me many particulars concerning Lord Byron, who passed 
much of his boyish time in her house, and was then so untameable that 
she said she had had unspeakable trouble with the daring, mischievous 
boy. She did not think him base, but ill-tempered ; for she observed that 
he always took a sort of pleasure in giving pain, especially to women ; 
though when he chose to be amiable, she confessed that it was hardly 
possible to resist him. She added, that whatever were the defects of his 
wife, he had certainly treated her very ill, and had exercised a refinement 
of torture towards her; probably because she had formerly refused him, 
for which he swore never-ending vengeance even on the day of his mar- 
riage. 

I did not put implicit faith in this account, in spite of my great respect 
for the narrator. The soul of a poet like Byron is hard to judge ; — the 
ordinary standard is quite inadequate to it, and very few people have any 
other to apply. 

Where one is much pleased, one generally pleases ; and accordingly I 
was pressingly invited to spend a few days in this little paradise. My 
restlessness is, however, as you know full well, equal to my indolence : and 
as I am difficult to move from a place where I have once fixed myself, 
(' temoin' my long unprofitable abode in London,) I find it equally difficult 
to bring myself to remain where the immediate interest is exhausted. 1 
therefore gratefully declined the invitation, and returned to Salthill. 

Avgast 30th. 

The terrace of Windsor Castle forms a delightful promenade for the 
people of the town, and is frequently enlivened by the band of the Guards. 

I walked there this morning with the pretty and amiable Misses C , 

and paid a visit with them to the ' chatelaine' of the Palace, an old un- 
married lady. 

It is impossible to have a more delightful residence. Every window 
commands a beautiful landscape. The venerable lady showed me a stone 
in the wall of her bedroom, on which was a decayed inscription. " This," 
said she, " was carved by a charming young knight, who pined here in 
captivity, just before his death ; he was suffocated under this very stone." 
" Good God !" said 1, " are you not afraid to sleep here — suppose the 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 185 

young knight's ghost should appear !" " Never fear !" exclaimed the 
sprightly old lady, " at my time of life one is not so timid; I am safe from 
all young knights, living or dead." We proceeded to the nohle chapel, 
where divine service was going on. The banners, swords, and coronets 
of the Knights of the Garter proudly ranged around; the melancholy 
light of the coloured windows ; the beautiful carvings in stone and wood ; 
the reverential groups of hearers, — formed a fine picture only defaced by 
some few objects : for instance, the ridiculous monument of the Princess 
Charlotte, in which the four subordinate figures turn their backs com- 
pletely on the spectator; while on the other hand the Princess appears in 
a twofold character, — extended as a corpse, and ascending to heaven as an 
angel. 

Lulled by the music, I gave myself up, in the quiet nook in which I 
had niched myself, to my fancies, and, absorbed in the kingdom of sound, 
soon forgot all around me. At last I thought myself dead, and yet I 
fancied myself a visitor of that Gothic chapel we wished to build, dear 
Julia, and standing before my own tomb. In the centre of the church, on 
a white marble sarcophagus, lay a figure wrapped in thick folds ot dra- 
pery, with a wolf and a lamb at his feet. Another pedestal of the same 
form was vacant. 1 approached, and read the following inscriptions on 
the marble. On the end under the head of the recumbent figure were the 
following words, 

In thy bosom, O God ! 
Rests his imperishable spirit, 
For the eternal law of life 
Is death and resurrection. 

At the opposite end was written ; 

His childhood was deprived of its greatest blessing, — 
Loving education in the paternal house. 
His youth was stormy, and vain, and foolish, 
But never estranged from Nature and from God. 



On the one side, 



Serious and melancholy was his manhood ;— 

It would have been shrouded in night, 

Had not a loving woman, 

Like the sun, with clear benign beams, 

Oft changed the dark night into cheerful day. 



On the other side, 



Length of days was denied him : 

What were his works and his deeds ? 

They live and bloom around you. 

What else he strove for, or attained, on earth,- 

To others it availed much, to himself little. 

24 



186 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

And now I thought much of you, and of all I love, and I felt a sort of 
pious sorrow for myself; — and as the sudden pause of the music awoke 
me from my dream, the silent tears were actually upon my cheek, so that 
I was almost ashamed to be seen. 

August 31st. 

One is well served in England, — that is certain. I was invited to dine 
at six at the Guard's mess which is very punctual, and sat writing till 
late. The barracks are three miles from my inn, which is, as usual, a 
post-house. I therefore told my servant to call for ' horses' instantly. In 
less than a minute they were harnessed before the door, and, in fifteen, 
driving like the wind, I was at table as the clock struck six. 

The military profession is on a far more social footing here than with 
us, for the simple reason that the members of it are richer. Though the 
service is as far as possible from being neglected, there is not the slightest 
trace of pedantry ; and, out of service, not the least distinction between 
the colonel and the youngest lieutenant. Every man takes as unrestrain- 
ed a part in conversation as in any other society. In the country the 
officers are all in uniform at mess, but not in London, — with the exception 
of the officer 'dujour.' After dinner, however, they all take their ease; 
and to-day I saw a young lieutenant sit down in dressing-gown and slippers 
to play whist with his colonel in uniform. These gentlemen have given 
me a general invitation to their table as long as I remain in the neighbour- 
hood, and are extremely friendly and cordial to me. 

I had passed the morning in seeing Frogmore, and the pictures in 
Windsor Castle. In the hall of the throne are several tolerable battle- 
pieces, by West : the subjects are the feats of Edward the Third and the 
Black Prince, — a throng of knights, snorting horses, ancient armour and 
caparisons, lances, swords and banners, which form a very appropriate de- 
coration for a royal hall. In another room I was struck by the very ex- 
pressive portrait of the Duke of Savoy, — the true Ideal of a ruler. Luther 
and Erasmus, by Holbein, are excellently paired, and yet contrasted : the 
acute and sarcastic countenance of the latter looks as if he were just about 
to utter the words he wrote to the Pope, who reproached him with not 
keeping his fasts : " Holy Father, my soul is Catholic, but my stomach is 
Protestant." 

The beauties of the Court of Charles the Second, who adorn a whole 
wall, are well suited to lead a man into transgression of another kind. 
There is nothing remarkable at Frogmore. — The piece of water is now 
only a swamp for frogs, though surrounded by hedges of rose and hew. 
A complete encampment of light moveable tents on the turf had a pretty 
effect. 

September 3rd. 

I have been prevailed upon to devote some days to the enjoyment of a 
country life at the beautiful Lady G 's, a relation of Canning. 

At breakfast she told me that she was present some months ago when 
Canning took leave of his mother (both being then in perfect health) in 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 187 

these words : " Adieu, dear mother ! in August we shall meet again." In 
July the mother died suddenly, and in the beginning of August her son 
followed her. 

Yesterday and the day before we drove to Egham races, which are held 
on a plain surrounded by hills. I met many persons I knew ; was pre- 
sented by the Duke of Clarence to the Queen of Wi'irtemberg ; betted 
successfully ; and in the evening went to a ptc-nic ball in the little town, 
which, as with us, was fruitful with country dandies and other amusing 
provincialisms. 

To-day I walked nearly the whole day long with some young ladies. 
Young Englishwomen are indefatigable walkers, through thick and thin, 
over hill and dale, — so that it requires some ambition to keep up with 
them. 

In the park of a nabob we found an interesting curiosity ; two dwarf 
trees, transplanted from China, — elms a hundred years old, with com- 
pletely the shrivelled look of their age, and yet scarcely two feet high. 
The secret of rearing such trees is unknown in Europe. 

At last the high-spirited girls climbed over a fence of Windsor Park, 
and disturbed the shades sacred to royal solitude with their merry laugh. 
By this means I saw several forbidden parts of the lovely scenery round 

Virginia Water, into which the anxious Lord H had not ventured ; 

— had we been caught, it surely would not have gone very hard with us in 
such company. 

Windsor, Sept. 5th. 

During the four days of my stay we had become such cordial friends, 
that I felt almost sad at parting. The ladies accompanied me two or three 
miles before I got into the carriage. I drove away somewhat ' triste,' and 
directed the post-boy to the barracks of the Guards, where I arrived just 
in time for dinner. With the aid of much champagne and claret, (for my 
long walk had made me thirsty,) I consoled myself for the parting with 

my fair friends as well as I could, and then drove with Captain B to 

a ' soiree' at Mrs. C 's. After tea, at about eleven o'clock of a splen- 
did night, in compliance with the wishes of the ladies, it was determined 
to take a walk in the Park, to see the gigantic castle by moonlight from 
a peculiarly favourable point. The walk was certainly rather long, but it 
well rewarded us. The sky had flocks of sheep scattered over its deep 
blue fields, (one of the officers, with more exactness than poetry, compared 
it to curds and whey,) over which the light of the lustrous moon was beau- 
tifully diffused. Our delight was soon rather rudely interrupted by two 
sentinels with muskets, who challenged and prepared to arrest us as tres- 
passers and breakers of the peace. (N. B. A company of twenty persons, 
principally ladies, and at least seven officers of the Guards in full uniform!) 
At last they consented to be satisfied with two officers whom they imme- 
diately took into custody. How different from our manners ! With us, 
officers would have felt themselves dishonoured by the hard words the sen- 
tinels used, and perhaps have thought it their duty to run them through 
on the spot. Here, it appeared quite in order, and not the slightest at- 
tempt at resistance was made. The rest of us went home; and in about 



188 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

an hour the two prisoners returned, having had to encounter many delays 

before they could obtain their release. One of them, Captain F , 

laughed heartily while he told us that the gamekeeper had reproved him 
severely, and said " it was a shame that officers, who were bound by their 
profession to repress all disorders, should not have abstained from com- 
mitting a trespass," and so forth. " The man was not so much in the 
wrong," added he ; " but ladies' wishes must always be complied with, 
' quand meme.' " 

On returning to my inn I found my old B , who came to receive my 

orders in person before his final departure. I am very well pleased with 
the Englishman whose character I investigated craniologically, and there- 
fore shall not miss my old countryman so much. 

He is the bearer of a large plan of a garden, on which 1 lay outstretched 
for an hour before I went to bed, to finish it; as Napoleon used to lie on 
his maps and plans. He, however, with his rough pencil drew blood ; I, 
only water and flower-beds ; — he fortifications, I summer-houses ; — he sol- 
diers, and I trees. 

In the sight of the All-seeing it may be the same whether his children 
play with cannon-balls or with nuts ; but to men the difference is consider- 
able : — in their opinion, he who causes them to be shot by thousands is far 
greater than he who only labours to promote 4heir enjoyment. 

A long index will illustrate my plan. Go hard to work to execute what 
I lay before you, and gladden my return with the realization of all my 
garden-dreams which have your approbation. 

My intention is now to return to London for a few days, for the purpose 
of seeing my horses embarked, and then to set out on my long tour in the 
country. The Journal will therefore have a long time to swell before I 
can send it you. Do not think, however, that I grow negligent ; for, as 
the illustrious and brilliant prince says, " There are few things I enjoy 
more than writing to you." 

Your L . 



LETTER XVIII. 

London, Sept. 1th, 1827. 

Dear friend, 

I am, as you know, not strong in remembering anniversaries and the 
like ; but I know full well that to-morrow is the day on which I left my 

poor Julia alone in B . A year has rolled "over us, and we insects are 

still creeping on in the old track. But we love each other as much as 
ever, and that is the main thing. We shall work our way in time through 
those great heaps under which we are now forced to toil so wearily ; and 
perhaps reach the fresh grass and the beautiful flowers on which the 
morning has scattered her diamonds, and the gay sunbeams dance glitter- 
ing in the wet crystal. ' Soyez tranquille, nous doublerons encore un jour 
le Cap de bonne esperance.' 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 189 

For some days I have written nothing about my sayings and doings, 
because they amounted only to this, — that I worked and wrote daily with 

B- , dined with L at the Travellers' Club, and went to bed. 

Yesterday we had the company of another German at dinner, Count , 

who is come to buy horses. He seems to have a good deal of money, 
and is young enough to enjoy it ; ' au reste,' the perfect picture of a good- 
natured country gentleman (Landjunker,) — of a truth, a most happy sort 
of man : — I only wish I were one. 

As to your opinion about parks, I must remark that the extent of them, 
especially when properly rounded, can never be great enough. Windsor 
park is the only one which has fully satisfied me as a whole, and the 
reason for that is its enormous size. It realizes all I would have ; — a 
pleasant tract of country, within the bounds of which you can live and do 
what you like, without privation or constraint ; hunt, fish, ride, drive, 
without ever feeling cramped ; in which you never see a point, except 
just at the entrance-gates, at which you remark, Here is a boundary ; and 
to which all the beauties of the surrounding country to the remotest dis- 
tance have been rendered tributary by a cultivated taste. 

In other respects you are right : one must not throw away good and 
bad together ; and it is better to conceal many defects and limitations of 
the ground by skilfully-planned paths and plantations, than to make dis- 
proportionate sacrifices to them. 

My horses are safe on board, and sail to-day; though the beautiful 
Hyperion behaved like mad, dashed the box in which he was enclosed 
into pieces like glass, and burst all the halters and straps that confined 
him. He was within an inch of falling into the river, and will probably 
give them a good deal of trouble on the passage, though we have bound him 
like a wild beast. One can't blame the poor animal for being frightened 
when the crane, like a giant's arm, seized him and bore him into the air. 
Many, however, take it very quietly, for even among horses there are 
Stoics. 

There is nothing which needs really detain me now in London ; but 

Lady is still here in the solitude, — and she is so attractive. To quit 

such a friend were a sin, — the more so, as I have not the least idea of 
falling in love with her. But is not the true unfixed friendship of a 
charming woman something very sweet? I have often remarked how 
men destroy all friendship with women, because they always think it 
incumbent on them to play the adorer; they thus alarm their delicacy, 
and check at once that unsuspecting confidence and ease which might other- 
wise subsist between them. I am well contented with the mere friendship'of 
an amiable woman, especially when I can read it in her soft blue eyes, 
hear it from a mouth of pearl and coral, and feel it in the kind pressure of 
a velvet hand. To this portrait you have only to add the innocent look of 
a dove, long dark-brown curling hair, a slender form, and the most beauti- 
ful English complexion, and you have Lady before your eyes. 

Doncaster, Sept. 16th. 

I might almost have dated from London, so rapidly have I skimmed 
over these hundred and eighty miles ; and yet I have had time to get 



190 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

a sight of two celebrated houses of the time of Elizabeth, though a tran- 
sient one. 

The tirst, Hatfield, which belonged to herself, and which she frequently 
inhabited, is less magnificent than the second, Burleigh House, which was 
bu.lt h\ her great minister Cecil. Hatfield is built of brick; only the 
eyebrow^ of the windows, the corners, &c. are of stone. The proportions 
are good and grand. There is nothing remarkable in the park and garden, 
but a line avenue of oaks, which are reported to have been planted by the 
Queen herself. 

I could only see the outside of Burleigh House ; for though the family 
were all absent, <the 'chatelaine' was in no way to be moved to desecrate 
the sabbath by showing the house to a foreigner. I regretted this the 
more, because there is a line collection of pictures. The ancient park is 
full of the finest trees ; but the water, both here and at Hatfield, stagnant 
and muddy. The house itself is in a confused style, Gothic below, and 
with chimneys like Corinthian pillars. The great statesman must have 
had a very corrupt taste in art. 

York, Sept. \lth. 

Doncaster races are the most frequented in England, and the course is 
far preferable to any in the country for elegance, fitness, and commodious 
sio-ht of the whole. The view of the race is more agreeable, and less 
brief and transient ; for from the lofty and elegant stand you distinctly 
overlook the whole course from beginning to end. The horses run in a 
circle, and the same point serves as starting-post and goal. The concourse 
of people, of handsome women and fashionable company, was extraordi- 
nary. All the great neighbouring nobility came in their gala equipages, 
— a very interesting sight to me, because I thus learned one sort of 
state observed here in the country, which is very different from that in 
town. The most distinguished equipage was that of the Duke of De- 
vonshire, and I describe his train to you as a notice for M . The 

Duke's parly were seated in a full-bodied carriage drawn by six horses, 
the harness and hammercloth of moderate richness, and the coachman in 
intermediate livery, flaxen wig, and boots. The carriage was escorted 
by twelve outriders : namely, four grooms mounted on horses of different 
colours, with light saddles and bridles, four postillions on carriage-horses 
exactly like those in the carriage, with harness-reins, and postillions' sad- 
dles ; lastly, four footmen in morning jackets, leathern breeches and top- 
boots, with saddle-cloths and holsters embroidered with the Duke's arms. 
The order of the train was as follows : first, two grooms : then two pos- 
tillions ; then the carriage with its six beautiful horses which the coach- 
man drove from the box, a postillion riding the leader. On the left rode 
a footman ; another somewhat further back on the right ; behind the car- 
riage two more postillions, then two grooms, and lastly, two more foot- 
men. The little fellow who rode the leader was the only one in full 
state livery, — yellow, blue, black and silver, with a powdered wig, — 
rather a theatrical dress, with the arms embroidered on his left sleeve. 

The St. Lcger race, which took place to-day, has probably caused 
many a sleepless night, for enormous sums have been lost. A little 
mare, which was so lightly esteemed that the bets were fifteen to one 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 191 

against her, was in first of twenty-six horses that ran. An acquaintance 
of mine won nine thousand pounds, and bad he been unsuccessful, would 
have lost hardly as many hundreds. Another is said to have lost nearly 
every thing he had, and, as it is asserted, through the trickery of the owner 
ofone.of the horses. 

Immediately after the races, which with their animated crowd and 
thousand equipages afforded DM a most .striking exhibition of English 
wealth, I drove further north, towards some object yet unknown to myself, 
and arrived at one o'clock in the morning at this .city of York. During 
the whole ride I read by my lamp Madame de Maintenon's Letters to the 
Princess dee Drains, which entertained me extremely. .Many passages are 
remarkably illustrative of the manners of her age. The incognito Queen 
of course understands court-life to the very bottom ; and often reminded 
me strongly of a good friend of yours, especially by her manner of af- 
fecting complete ignorance of all that was passing, and of undervaluing 
her own influence. She however shows great mildness and prudence, and 
such extraordinary tact and good-breeding in all she says and does, that one 
is constrained to think her more amiable than history represents her. It is 
indeed always a bad thing to let an old woman govern, whether in petti- 
coats or breeches ; but it was easier then than now, for all ranks of people 
were obviously far more like great ' nans' children. They even made 
war in that spirit. Nay, they regarded Almighty God as a Loui3 the 
Fourteenth in the highest ' potenz ;' and, like true courtiers, when they 
were ' in articulo mortis,' they left their earthly king in a moment, — 
taking no further notice of him, — to devote themselves exclusively to that 
mightier Ruler, whom they had hitherto neglected as too distant. One 
can distinctly perceive in these old ' Memoires,' that those who had been 
tolerably successful at Court went out of the world with considerable 
confidence in their ' savoir faire' in heaven ; while those who were in dis- 
grace suffered much greater fear of death, and severer stings of con- 
science. It is quite impossible, now, to represent to oneself such a Court 
or such an existence, faithfully ; but perhaps for our particular class, it was 
not such a bad state of things. I fell into many reflections on this eter- 
nal change in human affairs ; and at length breathed upon by that 
invisible spirit which pervades the Whole, turned with loving greet- 
ings to the brilliant star of eve, which from endless years had looked 
down upon all this struggle with pitying tolerance and untroubled peace. 

September 19th. 

There are certainly some talents in me which it is a pity to think of 

Now all this is lost and thrown away (for one always serves oneself badly,) 
like many better things : — for example, a wondrously beautiful tree in 
some American wilderness, which every spring decks itself in vain with 
the richest foliage and the most fragrant blossoms, where no human being 
can gladden his senses and his spirit by its sweetness. Such an existence 
we call useless. What amiable egotism ! — and under its unjust sentence 
I too must suffer, for those above-mentioned virtues of mine are just as 
useless ; — nay, my whole person would probably be so, were I not of sub- 



192 



LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



stantial use to the post-boys and waiters, who take my money ; and valu- 
able to you, my kind friend, (' je m'en flatte au moins,') on other grounds. 
So that I do not live in the world absolutely and utterly for nothing ; and, 
as on the other hand I hurt nobody, my account stands tolerably fair after 
striking a balance. 

This whole day I have been wandering about the town. I began with 
the cathedral, which may be compared to that of Milan for the rich- 
ness of its ornaments, as well as for its size. The founder was Arch- 
bishop Scrope, (one of Shakespeare's personages,) whom Henry the 
Fourth beheaded as a rebel in 1405. He lies buried in the church ; and 
in the chapter-house is a table covered with a piece of tapestry belong- 
ing to him, and embroidered with his arms. It is still in tolerable pre- 
servation. The windows in the church are chiefly of old stained glass, 
only here and there repaired with new. * The carving in stone is every- 
where admirable, and has all the delicacy and elegance of carved wood, 
representing all sorts of foliage, animals, angels, &c. One of the great 
windows is not less than seventy-five feet high and thirty-two broad. 
That at the other end represents, by its strange stone ramifications, 
the veins of the human heart, and, with its blood-red glass, produces 
a curious effect. One of the side windows is remarkable for being paint- 
ed in imitation of embroidery ; it is like a gay carpet. In ;,the choir 
is an old chair in which several Kings of England were crowned. I 
sat down in it, and found it, for stone, very comfortable ; I dare say I 
should have thought it still more so if it had been the preparation for a 
throne. 

Near the church is a very pretty Gothic library, the arrangements of 
which appeared to me very well contrived. Every book has three num- 
bers on the back. At the top, that of the shelf, then that of the compart- 
ment, and below, its own number ; so that it can be found in a moment. 
The numbers are on pretty little labels, and do not at all deform the books. 
In one corner is a very light and convenient staircase leading to the gal- 
lery, which runs about midway round the room. 

The alphabetical catalogue is arranged as follows : 

Page 20. 



Form. 


Letter C. 


Edition. 


Shelf. 


Compart- 
ment. 


Number. 


8vo. 

4to. 
Folio 
12mo 


Cosmo, &c. 
Cavendish 
Colley 


Verona 1519 
London 1802 
London 1760 
Paris 1820 


II. 

I. 

XI. 

1 X. 


7 
5 
3 
6 


189—192 

52—55 

1080—1082 

920—930 





This will suffice to make it clear to you ; and as I know by experience 
what a difficult matter the arranging of a library is, and how many are 
the ways of doing it, 1 send you this scheme, as very well suited to a small 
collection of books. 

I could not get a sight of any of the rare books or manuscripts kept 
here, as the librarian was absent. In a corner I found a very curious 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 193 

drawing of the procession at the great Marlborough's funeral. It is 
almost incredible how totally the dresses and customs have altered even 
since that time. The aged clerk who conducted me about, said he re- 
membered when a boy to have seen soldiers with long bag-wigs like those 
in the picture. 

About three-quarters of a mile from the Minster, on a hill near to the 
town, are the romantic ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, overgrown with trees 
and ivy. The people here have the not very praiseworthy project of erect- 
ing a public building on the same hill : they have even begun to dig the 
foundation ; in doing which they have come upon some of the most beau- 
tiful remains of the old abbey, as perfect as if executed yesterday. I 
saw several exquisite capitals still in the earth, and in a neighbouring 
house, admirable bas-reliefs which have been deposited there while the 
work is going on. We crossed the river Ouse in a boat, and continued 
our walk along the top of the old city wall, — a picturesque but rather 
impracticable way. The surrounding country is very fresh and green ; 
and the numerous Gothic towers of the town give great diversity and 
beauty to the prospect. After a quarter of an hour's walk, we reached 
the Micklegate, from which the old barbican has been pulled down, but 
which has otherwise retained its original form. The gorgeous arms of 
York and England glittered upon it with knightly splendour. 

In an adjoining field a Roman tomb was discovered fifteen years ago, 
and the owner who found it, now exhibits it in his cellar. The arch, of 
Roman brick, is perfectly fresh : the skeleton, lying in a stone coffin be- 
neath, is pronounced by anatomists to be that of a young woman ; and, 
(which is saying a good deal at the end of two thousand years,) she has 
still * des beaux restes,' — splendid teeth, and a beautifully formed skull. 
I examined the organs carefully, and found all the most desirable qua- 
lities ; to such a degree, indeed, that I could not help regretting making 
her acquaintance two thousand years too late, or I should certainly have 
married her. A better organized cranium I shall never find — that's 
certain. She does not seem to have been rich, for nothing was found in 
her coffin but two glass bottles, — very curious things in themselves, more 
perfect and more like our glass than any I ever saw, except at Pompeii. 
It is distinguishable from ours only by its silvery shine, and exhibits no 
mark of having been blown, though no means have been discovered of 
concealing such marks in any of our uncut glass. The British Museum 
has offered the possessor a large sum for these glasses. He finds it, how- 
ever, more advantageous to show the curiosities himself, at a ' thaler' of 
our money a-head. 

We returned to the Micklegate, and proceeded with still more diffi- 
culty along the crumbling wall, till, after half an hour's scrambling, we 
came to a beautiful ruin called Clifford's Tower. This ancient fortress 
plays a part in English history. On one occasion a thousand Jews were 
burnt alive in it, — having no Rothschild then to save them. At last, about 
a century ago, being used as a magazine for gunpowder, it was blown up, and 
has ever since been abandoned to the eating tooth of Time. But time not 
only destroys, but builds up : and thus as the ruins decayed, ivy, in which 
thousands of sparrows nestle, curled itself around them like thick tresses ; 
and in the centre of the tower is a large nut-tree, which overtops the 
roofless walls. The hill or mound on which the ruin stands, was con- 

25 



1 94 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

structed by the Romans ; and a man who lately dug to a considerable 
depth in search of treasure, found almost the whole foundation of it com- 
posed of bones of men and horses. Such is the earth— the universal grave 
and cradle. 

From ruins and death I proceeded to the living dead, who pine at the 
foot of the hill — the poor prisoners in the county jail. Externally their 
dwelling appears a palace. The interior has a very different aspect ; 
and my heart ached for the poOr devils who were to sit the whole winter 
through till March, in cells, which are clean, it is true, but chill and 
damp, only on suspicion ; with the pleasant prospect, perhaps, of being 
hanged at the end. If they are acquitted, they have no indemnification 
to expect. In the court in which the debtors were allowed to walk, 
were two horses, a she-goat, and an ass. In all the rooms and cells I 
visited, I observed the greatest cleanliness and order. But the strangest 
peculiarity of this prison, was a sort of thieves' wardrobe, arranged 
with real elegance, like the wardrobe of a theatre. A jailor, whose 
head was considerably overloaded with drink, stammered out the follow- 
ing explanation : 

" Here you see the wigs of the famous Granby, which disguised him so, 
that for ten years he could never be caught. He was hanged here in 
1786. — Here is the stake with which George Nayler was knocked down 
two years ago on the road to Doncaster. He was hanged here last 
spring. — Here is Stephen's ' knock-down,' with which he killed six people 
at once. He was hanged here likewise two years ago. — Here are the 
enormous iron leg-bolts, the only things that would hold Fitzpatrick. He 
escaped seven times out of the strongest prisons : but these leg-bolts, 
which I fastened on him myself, were a little too heavy for him. (They 
were complete, beams of iron, which a horse could hardly have dragged 
along.) He did not wear them long, for two months afterwards, on the 
first of May, — a beautiful morning 'twas, — he was sent to another world. — 
Here are the machines with which Cook coined false money. He was 
quite the gentleman — hanged in 1810." 

" Pray," interrupted I, " what sort of a weapon is this immense wooden 
mallet ?" 

" Oh !" grinned the old fellow, " that's innocent enough ; that's only 
what 1 break sugar with when I make negus, He, he, he ! — only I put it 
here ready." 

The wardrobe was immediately adjoining his room, and seemed an 
amateur collection, which owed its rise entirely to his own taste and zeal. 
How various are the hobby-horses of men ! 

I am afraid you are already tired of this long walk, dear Julia; but you 
must follow me a little further ; nay, you may even consent to climb from 
the depth to the highest height. I wished to see the whole panorama of 
my walk at a glance, and selected for that purpose a Gothic tower of the 
finest proportions. It is of the most beautiful, elaborate architecture from 
top to bottom ; and behind the transparent tracery I had espied from a 
distance, with the aid of my opera-glas3, ladders which extremely tempted 
me to mount. 

After a stout walk, — in the course of which we came to another old 
gate, called the Nobles' Gate, which was built up fifty years ago and is 
now re-opened to serve as a passage to the new cattle-market, — we at 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 195 

length reached the desired tower, a part of the oldest church in York. I 
had some trouble in finding the clerk, a black man, more like a coal- 
heaver than a servant of the church, — but full of goodwill. I asked him 
if one could get up to the fine galleries at the top. " That I don't know," 
replied he, " for I never went up, though I have been clerk these ten 
years. There are only old ladders, and some are broken at the top, so 
that I don't think it possible." This was enough to fire my adventurous 
soul ; and I hastened up the worst, darkest, narrowest, and most decayed 
winding staircase you can imagine. We soon reached the ladders ; we 
climbed them without halting, and came to the first landing-place. But 
here the clerk and the ' laquais de place' hesitated to proceed. A high 
and certainly very frail-looking ladder, wanting many staves, led to a 
small square hole at the top (where, for a space of about six feet, the staves 
were entirely gone ;) through this you reached the roof. I was determin- 
ed not to go back ' re infecta,' so I scrambled up, reached the edge of the 
opening with my hands, and swung myself up with some little difficulty. 
The view was indeed magnificent, and I exactly attained my chief end, — 
to see the noble Minsler, (which is so miserably encumbered by houses 
below,) perfectly free in all its colossal majesty, like a line-of-battle ship 
among boats. The wind, however, blew so terribly around my elevated 
post, and all seemed in such a decaying state, that I could almost fancy 
the whole tower rocked in the blast. By degrees I grew uncomfortable 
in this continued storm. I began my descent, but found that far more 
difficult than the ascent, as is generally the case in such places. But one 
must not stay to think, if one begins to feel what the English call ' ner- 
vous.' Holding fast by my hands, therefore, I let my feet drop like feelers 
in search of the highest stave, and very glad was I when I found it. On 
my arrival at the bottom I was as black as the clerk. 

Meanwhile it was the time of evening service in the Minster, where a 
fine organ and well-selected music in so noble a building, promised me a 
delightful resting-place. I hastened thither, and dreamed away a delici- 
ous half-hour under the influence of sweet sounds and melancholy ; while 
this vast organ, — the tyrant of music, as Heinze calls it, — rolled pealing 
through the immense aisles, and the sweet voices of children, like the 
breath of spring, lulled the awe-struck soul again to peace. 

Almost in the twilight I visited the town-hall, where the Lord Mayor 
(only London and York have Lord Mayors) holds his court three times a 
week, and where the sessions are held every three months. It is an old 
and handsome Gothic building. Near it are two rooms for the barristers 
and attorneys (obern unci untern Advocaten.) In the upper room the 
Lord Mayor's arms are emblazoned in modern painted glass,— -for every 
tradesman has arms here. One can generally discover from them 
what is the calling of the possessor. The mottos, however, are less busi- 
ness-like, and seem to me to affect too noble an air. 

I have now established the proper balance, that is to say, my hands are 
as tired of writing as my feet of walking. It is time to give the stomach 
some work to do. If I were Walter Scott, I would give jou the bill of 
fare ; but as it is, I don't venture. Instead of it I shall subjoin a word 
upon my after-dinner reading, which will be furnished again by Madame 
de Maintenon. 

It really touched me to see how vividly the poor woman paints the 



196 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

melancholy uniformity, the bitter ' gene' of her life : and how often and 
heartily she longs, with a force and a sincerity that cannot be mistaken, 
for her dismissal from this stage, which, as she says, " worse than all 
others, lasts from morning till night.'''' Amidst all her power and splen- 
dour, she still seems to regard death as the most desirable of things : and 
indeed, after the long endless void, — after the sacrifice of every personal 
feeling and inclination year after year, one can imagine the mortal wear- 
iness of the spirit, longing for its release. This explains the religious 
mania that took possession of her, which was also characteristic of the 
childishness of the age. Had a woman of Madame de Maintenon's talents 
lived at a later period, Molinistes and Jansenistes would hardly have 
succeeded in extorting a smile of contempt from her ; but in her time it 
was otherwise. Still she is in her way a great woman, as Louis the 
Fourteenth is, in his, a great king — in a little age. It was precisely be- 
cause it teas little that it formed little things, — Court, society, &c. — to 
far greater perfection than ours; and thence to the imaginative mind, 
which contemplates with pleasure the Perfect in every thing, great or 
small, must ever present an attractive picture. 

Sept. 20th. 

This morning I devoted to the gleanings, and visited the ancient church 
of All Saints, where I found some admirable painted glass, though in very 
bad preservation. There was a Virgin and Child, of a beauty and sweet- 
ness of expression of which Raphael would not have needed to be ashamed. 
I then went to another old church, St. Mary's, where there is a strange 
gateway on which a number of hieroglyphics and the signs of the zodiac 
are beautifully carved in stone. As I had been introduced to the Arch- 
bishop of York in London, I wrote him a note yesterday, and begged to 
be allowed to pay my respects to him. He returned a most polite answer, 
begging me to pass some days at his house. I however declined his 
invitation to more than a dinner, and drove to his country-house at five 
o'clock. I found a beautifully kept, luxuriant pleasure-ground, and stately 
old Gothic structure in a peculiar slyle, which pleased me much. It was 
not very large, but perfectly elegant ; and at the four corners of the flat 
roof stood four colossal eagles with out-stretched wings. Instead of the 
heavy battlements, which have a good effect only in enormous masses, a 
beautiful sort of open-work ornament in stone, at once rich and light, ran 
round the roof as a parapet. That the interior corresponded in magnifi- 
cence with the exterior you may conclude from the ecclesiastical rank 
and wealth of the possessor. The venerable Archbishop, still a very 
hale active man, conducted me about, and showed me his kitchen-gardens 
and hot-houses, which are remarkably fine. They were as neat as the 
most elegant drawing-room, — a thing which it would be impossible to 
make our gardeners understand. Not a trace of disorder or dirt, of 
boards and tools lying about, dunghills near the paths, or the like. On 
the walls were the choicest fruit-trees arranged in symmetrical lines ; 
among them currant-bushes which had attained to such a growth by the 
removal of all the small under-branches, that they were twelve feet 
high, and loaded to excess with bunches like small grapes. In the hot 
houses, in which pines and grenadillas (a West-Indian fruit in the form of 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 197 

a little melon, and with a flavour like that of a pomegranate,) grew lux- 
uriantly, was a different sort of vine in every window : all were thick- 
hung with fruit. The fruit-trees on the walls were covered with nets, 
and at a later season are matted, so that one may pluck ripe fruit till 
January. One part of the garden was full of ripe strawberries of a pecu- 
liar kind, and His Grace assured me he had them in the open air till 
January. He pointed out to me the Norman cress as a new vegetable of 
remarkably fine flavour, and told me it might be cut \a the snow. 

The multitude of flowers still in blossom which edged the beds of the 
kitchen-garden was striking. 1 know that this climate is favourable to 
gardeners, nevertheless they must excel ours in the management of 
flowers. 

In the pleasure-ground I saw larches not only of enormous size, but as 
thick in foliage as pines, and their pendent branches extending twenty 
feet over the turf. I heard here, for the first time, that it is thought 
very beneficial to trees of this tribe* to touch the moist earth with their 
branches, for that they draw great nourishment in that way. 

A dinner worthy of an Archbishop closed this agreeable evening. I 
have told you that the wives of English Bishops do not share their hus- 
band's titles. The wife of the Archbishop of York is however, a ' Lady 
in her own right ;' and what is more, a very agreeable woman. She has 
ten sons and three daughters. 

Scarborough, Sept. 21st. 

I forgot to tell you a droll story that was related yesterday ; the 
strongest instance of ' distraction' (except that of the self-decapitating 
Irishman,) you ever heard. Lord Seaford said, that his uncle, the old 
Earl of Warwick, who was famous for fits of absence, travelled up to 
London one evening from Warwick Castle on important business, which 
he settled to his satisfaction the following day, and returned again in the 
night. He had hardly leached home, when he fainted. All the family 
were alarmed, and asked his valet if his Lord had been ill in London. 
" No," replied the man, " he has been very well : but I really believe 
that he has forgotten to eat ever since he was away." This was actually 
the case, and a plate of soup soon restored His Lordship to his accus- 
tomed health. 

I write to you from a sea bathing place that has the reputation of being 
very beautiful. As yet I know nothing about it, for it was pitch dark 
when I arrived. In the morning I hope to enjoy the best possible view, 
for I am lodged in the fourth story, the house being choke-full. 

On my journey I visited Castle Howard, the seat of Lord Carlisle. It 
is one of the English ' show places,' but does not please me in the least. 
It was built by Vanbrugh, an architect of the time of Louis the Four- 
teenth, who built Blenheim in the same bad French taste. That, how- 
ever, imposes by its mass, but Castle Howard neither imposes nor pleases. 
The whole park, too, has something to the last degree melancholy, stiff", 
and desolate. On a hill is a large temple, the burial-place of the family. 
The coffins are placed around in cells, most of which are still empty ; so 
that the whole looks like a bee-hive, only indeed more silent and tranquil. 

* Nadelholz : a generic word including all trees with leaves like a needle, — pine, fir, 
larch, &e. — Transjl. 



198 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

In the castle are some fine pictures and antiques. Among the former, the 
celebrated Three Marys of Annibal Carracci is particularly remarkable. 
This picture represents the dead Christ, behind whom his mother has sunk 
fainting ; the elder Mary hastens to her with a gesture of lamentation, 
while Mary Magdalene throws herself despairingly on the body. The 
gradation from actual death to fainting, thence to the subdued grief of 
age, and lastly, to the living despair of youth, is given with inimitable 
truth. Every limb in the body of Christ appears truly dead: you see that 
the vital spirit has utterly quitted this form, so motionless, cold, and stiff. 
On the contrary, all is life and motion in the beautiful Magdalene, even 
to the very hair ; all is the vigour and fulness of life, excited by the bit. 
terest grief. — Opposite hangs Annibal's portrait by himself. It has very 
striking features, but looks more like a ' highwayman' than an artist. 
You, dear Julia, would have been most attracted by a collection of draw- 
ings of the Lords and Ladies of the Court of Francis the Firsts-fifty or 
sixty portraits : they were painted memoirs. Among the antiques I was 
amused by a Goose of the Capitol in bronze, which you fancy your hear 
cackling with its outstretched wings and open bill. A picture of Henry 
the Eighth, by Holbein, in admirable preservation, is worth mention ; — 
otherwise nothing particularly struck me. The well-known St. John by 
Domenichino is here, and given out to be an original. If I mistake not, 
the real one is in Germany. 

The park, planted in large stiff masses, is remarkably rich in archways : 
I passed through about seven before I reached the house. Over a muddy 
pond, not far from the Castle, is a stone bridge of five or six arches, and 
over this bridge — no passage. It is only an ' object ;' and that it may 
answer this description thoroughly, there is not a tree or a bush near it or 
before it. It seems that the whole grounds are just as they were laid out 
a hundred and twenty years ago. Obelisks and pyramids are as thick as 
hops, and every view ends with one, as a staring termination. One pyra- 
mid is, however, of use, for it is an inn. 

Sept. 22nd. 

If colds and consumptions are frequent in England, it is more to be 
attributed to the habits of the people than the climate. They have a 
peculiar predilection for walks on the wet grass ; and in every public 
room there are open windows, so that it is hardly possible to bear the 
drafts. Even when they are shut the wind whistles through them ; for 
they are seldom substantial, and never double. The climate too, however 
favourable to vegetation, is dreadful for men. This morning at nine 
o'clock, I rode out on a hired horse, in beautiful weather and a cloudless 
sky, and before I had been out an hour the most soaking rain wetted me 
through and through. At last I reached the village, where, in despair at 
not finding even a gate-way under which to take shelter, I sprang from 
my horse, and seeing a cottage door open, went in, and found two old 
women cooking something over a fire. In England, everything domestic 
is held so sacred and inviolable, that a man who enters a room without 
having cautiously announced himself and begged pardon, instantly excites 
alarm and displeasure. Although the cause of my intrusion ran in pretty 
obvious streams from my hat and clothes, I was not very cordially re- 
ceived by the old ladies. But what was the rage and horror of my host- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 199 

esses ' malgre elles,' when my steed, whose sagacity would have done 
honour to Nestor himself, walked in at the door, and before anything could 
be done to stop him, took his station in the most quiet and decorous man- 
ner before the chimney-piece, and with a look of sly, affected stupidity, 
began to dry his dripping ears at the fire. I thought the women would 
have died of rage, and I of laughing. I had such compassion for my poor 
comrade in misfortune, that I did not like to turn him out by force ; and 
so, — they scolding and storming, I trying to appease them with gentle 
words, and the more approved eloquence of other silver sounds, — we staid, 
half by force, half by entreaty, till the storm was a little over, and we 
were a little dried. The drying, however, was of small avail ; for, at the 
entrance to the romantic Forge Valley, storm and rain began afresh. I 
surrendered myself to my fate, though wholly without defence, and con- 
soled myself with the beauties of the surrounding spot, — a deep, narrow 
valley, clothed with rich wood, through which a rapid, foaming streamlet 
took its way. By the side of the brook was a good road. I remarked a 
pretty and simple way of enclosing a spring between two large blocks of 
stones set upright, and a third laid across. Through this rude portal the 
water gushed forth, and bounded on its course. 

To avoid catching cold, if possible, I took a warm salt bath as soon as I 
arrived, and then proceeded to the ' Sands,' — that is, the part of the beach 
left by the tide ; a very singular promenade. Saddle-horses, and car- 
riages of all kinds, stand in numbers for hire ; and you may ride for miles 
on the very brink of the waves, over ground like velvet. The old Castle 
of Scarborough on the one side, and a fine iron bridge connecting two hills 
on the other, increase the picturesque character of the scene. I rode by 
the light of the evening sun up to the Castle, from which the view is 
magnificent, and which is itself an imposing object. 

On the highest point of the ruin is an iron machine like a kibble, which 
serves as a beacon. A large tar-barrel is placed in it and set on fire. It 
burns like a flaming torch the night through. The Castle stands on a 
projecting rock, which rises to the height of a hundred and fifty or two 
hundred feet perpendicular from the sea. Around the Castle its summit is 
like a bowling-green. 

Sept. 23rd. 

To-day I rode along the sea-coast to Filey, where there is a celebrated 
bridge of rocks built into the sea by the hand of Nature. The sea was 
blue, and covered with sails. At Filey I took a guide. We passed along 
many strangely-shaped rocks, and came at length to this bridge, which is 
in fact only a broad reef, running out about three-quarters of a mile into 
the sea. The detached blocks were thrown about in fantastic groups, and 
it was necessary to take some care not to slip over their smooth-washed 
sides. The tide was coming in, and already covered a part of the reefs. 
After satisfying my curiosity I scrambled back, and took my way through 
a pleasant field to the nearest inn. 

Flamborough Head, Sept. 24^/t : — Evening. 

Distances are calculated quite otherwise here than with us. My respect- 
able old mare, a hired one, brought me here very well, five German miles in 



200 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

two hours. As soon as I arrived, I hired another horse to ride a mile and 
a half (German) further, to see the light-house and cavern which render 
Flamborough Head remarkable. The weather was most brilliant, with a 
good deal of wind, so that I hoped this time to escape a wetting ; but I was 
deceived ; for I had scarcely reached the cliffs when I was regaled not 
only with the ' cbligato' drenching rain, but also with the accompaniment 
of a violent tempest. This, however, was an agreeable variety ; for thun- 
der and lightning beheld from beetling cliffs overhanging a foaming sea 
are worth encountering some inconvenience for. The custom-house officer 
who accompanied me, very civilly brought me an umbrella, seeing the 
lightness of my dress ; but the storm, and the slippery and perilous path 
at the edge of the precipice rendered it useless. The sea has washed 
away the rocks in such a manner that many stand like solitary towers or 
columns in the waves. They looked like huge sea-spirits, — their white- 
ness rendered more glaring by the inky sky. There are many caverns, to 
which there is access at low water. It was now high-tide, however, and 1 
was obliged to hire a fishing-boat to take me to the largest of them. In- 
spired by the fresh breeze, I took an oar for the first time in my life, and 
rowed heartily : I find the exercise so pleasant that I shall certainly take 
it as often as possible. The sea was so rough that I could not help think- 
ing we were in some danger, and expressed as much to my companion. 
He answered me very poetically ; " O Sir ! do you think life is not as 
sweet to me as it is to you, because I am only a poor fisherman ? As far 
as the mouth of the cavern there is no danger, but we can't go in to-day." 
I was therefore obliged to content myself with casting a glance into the 
huge arch-way, whence the foam flew up like smoke, amid the howling 
and bellowing of the waves. As the fisherman assured me that sea-water 
never gave cold, I mounted my horse, still dripping from the salt wave, 
and rode to the light-house. This was the more interesting to me, as I 
had till now but a very imperfect conception of the construction of these 
buildings.* 

An opportunity, which has presented itself, of sending this letter safely 
to the Embassy, enables me to share my travels with you thus far. 

I therefore close it for the present, — always with Scheherezade's condi- 
tion of beginning again to-morrow. 

' Sans adieu,' therefore, 

Your L . 



LETTER XIX. 

Whitby, Sept. 25 th. 
Dear Julia, 

I slept rather late after my yesterday's fatigues, and did not leave 
Scarborough till two o'clock. The road to Whitby is very hilly, and the 
aspect of the country singular. As far as the eye can reach, neither tree, 
house, wall, nor hedge ; — nothing but an endless sea of wavy hills, often of 

* The minute description of the arrangements of the light-house is omitted, as most 
English readers are acquainted with them. — Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 201 

a strnge regularity of form, like heaps of rubbish shot down, thickly over- 
gro with heather, which at a near view presents the most beautiful 
shacks of purple and red, but at a distance sheds one uniform dingy brown 
over the whole landscape, promising a rich harvest to grouse-shooters. 
Nothing breaks the uniformity but a number of white spots moving slowly 
here and there — the down sheep, with their black faces and fine wool. 
About three miles from Whitby, as you descend from the hilly country, 
the scene gradually changes, and near the town becomes very romantic. 
Meanwhile English cleanliness and elegance sensibly diminish. Whitby 
is exactly like an old German town; without ' trottoirs,' equally dirty, and 
with as narrow streets. 

Probably iew strangers of any ' apparence' visit this miserable place ; 
or whether they took me for somebody else 1 know not, — but so it was, 
that they besieged me like some strange animal, and did not let me depart 
without an escort of at least a hundred people, who crowded round me, 
very good-naturedly indeed, but rather too pressingly, and examined me 
from head to foot. I could not help thinking of a droll anecdote the Duke 
of Leeds told me. This nobleman was very affable with his tenants and 
people ; one of them came up to him one day when he was riding, and 
told him he had a great favour to beg of him. The Duke asked him what 
it was. The man replied, after some hesitation, that he had a little boy 
who plagued him day and night to let him see the Duke, and that as His 
Grace was now close to his cottage, he would perhaps do him the great 
favour to let his son look at him. The Duke readily consented, and rode 
laughing to the cottage, where the delighted father ran in and fetched his 
child. The boy stood amazed, looking at the middle-aged gentleman of 
not very commanding exterior before him, of whose greatness and power 
he had heard so much ; gazed at him a long time ; then touched him ; and 
suddenly asked, " Can you swim ?" " No, my good boy," said the Duke. 
" Can you fly ?" « Nfc, I can't fly neither." " Then I like father's drake 
better, for he can do both." 

Whitby has a harbour shut in between very picturesque rocks, with a 
handsome granite pier stretching far into the sea, from which you have a 
fine view of the town. The ruins of the celebrated abbey, standing on an 
abrupt crag, are peculiarly beautiful. It was founded by a King of 
Northumberland in the sixth century, and is now the property of some 
private individual, who does nothing for the preservation of this sublime 
memorial of ancient greatness. His cattle feed among its mouldering 
walls, which are so choked with dirt and rubbish that I could hardly ap- 
proach to see them. I alighted by the light of the young moon, and was 
enchanted by the romantic effect, — lofty columns, darting up into the air 
like the slender trunks of pines; long rows of windows in good preserva- 
tion, and many finely executed ornaments about them, still as perfect as 
if the wind of the first autumn now played among their ample arches. 
Other parts were quite altered and decayed, and many a frightful face lay 
scattered about, grinning at me in the moonlight. Near the abbey is a 
very ancient church, which is still used, and is surrounded by hundreds of 
moss-grown gravestones. 

I am lodged in a humble but very comfortable country inn, kept by 
two sisters, whose civility is of that sort which springs from real good- 
nature and zeal, and not from regard to pelf alone. As I asked for a 

26 



202 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

book they brought me the Chronicle of Whitby, which I turned over, 
while the wind roared as loudly without, as it does round our good cas- 
tle of M- • In this Chronicle is a valuation of lands in the seventh 

century, in which Whitby, with its appurtenances, is rated at sixty shil- 
lings ! 

I find from it, that the vast and magnificent abbey has been destroyed 
neither by fire nor by violence, but was delivered over by more silent 
tyranny to the tooth of time. Henry the Eighth confiscated this with 
the rest, and sold it, even to the stones of the building. Fortunately, after 
several houses in the town had been built of the materials, an ancestor 
of the present possessor bought what remained, whic'h has ever since been 
left ' in statu quo.' 

Guisborough : — Evening. 

I had written a note to Lord Mulgrave, the proprietor of a great alum- 
work, and of a beautiful house and park on the sea-shore, begging per- 
mission to see them. He sent me a very polite answer, and a groom on 
horseback to conduct me. This aggravated the yesterday's misery ; and 
the chief magistrate of the little town now though fit to becompliment me 
by the mission of two of his colleagues, who were also secretaries of the 
Museum, which they proposed to show me. As it contains many very 
curious fossils found in this neighbourhood, l accepted their offer. Half 
the town was collected again, and followed us, with an ' arriere garde' of 
a very noisy ' jeunesse.' In the Museum I found a number of the mem- 
bers assembled, and a blooming company of ladies, from whose attractive 
faces I was continually forced to turn away my eyes to look at a crocodile 
or a petrified fish. The two secretaries had divided the duties between 
them : — one did the honours of the fish and amphibia ; the other of the 
quadrupeds, birds, and minerals : and both were so zealous that 1 should 
see everything in their respective departments, white some dilettanti were 
no less eager to show me other things, that I had need of the hundred eyes 
of Argus to take in all. The thing which interested me the most was an 
Esquimaux canoe with the fishing apparatus complete, presented by 
Captain Parry. It is made entirely of whalebone and seal-skins, and so 
light that one can scarcely cenceive how it can encounter the sea. It is 
tolerably long ; but in the centre, at its grearest breadth, scarcely a foot 
across ; the whole is enclosed like a box, with the exception of a round 
hole in the middle, in which the Esquimaux sits and balances his little 
bark with a double oar. The petrifactions of all kinds, as well of existing 
as of antediluvian animals and plants, are extremely numerous and fine, 
and the large crocodile, almost perfect, is certainly 'unique' in its kind. 
The gentlemen insisted on accompanying me back to my inn, whither we 
were attended by the usual ' cortege.' As I drove off, a dreadful hur- 
rah resounded, and several of the children of both sexes did not quit me 
till they found it impossible to keep pace with the horses. 

I now drove slowly along the beach, conducted by Lord Mulgrave's 
servant. I alighted to walk, and amused myself with picking up little 
stones of the most brilliant colours which covered the beach. In an 
hour we reached the alum-work, which lies in the most romantic situ- 
ation, between the abrupt cliffs overhanging the sea. I examined it all 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 203 

very minutely, as you will see by the accompanying letter to the A — — 
D 

I had to go back along a path which seemed fit only for goats, and of 
the inconveniences of which the overseer had advertized me. Sometimes 
it was scarcely a foot broad, and at its sides rose a smooth alum rock of 
two hundred feet perpendicular height. Along such paths, many of which 
intersect the rocks, the men work, and hew away the alum ore which lies 
near the surface. This affords the strangest spectacle you can imagine : 
the men appear to hang to the wall of rock like swallows, and are often 
obliged to be pulled up by ropes. Below, in the valley, are large cars for 
carrying away the ore, which is incessantly heard clattering down the 
rocks. It took me two hours to see all ; and I then drove to the house, 
where Lord Mulgrave's son (the earl himself being ill of the gout) regaled 
me very hospitably with an excellent luncheon, and conducted me about 
the park. It is indebted for its greatest beauties to Nature, to whose 
rocks, brooks, and wooded glens, you have access through very judi- 
ciously-cut roads, some German miles in length. From the house you 
look from under high oaks and beeches along a velvet turf, upon the sea, 
covered with a hundred sails. One of the greatest ornaments of the park 
is the old castle, — a ruin believed to have been originally a Roman fort, 
and afterwards the castle of the Saxon prince Wanda. At a later period 
it was given to the ancestor of the present family by King John, as a re- 
ward for the murder of the young prince, so touchingly described by 
Shakspeare. The view from the old battlements is wild and picturesque. 
In the new castle, which was built fifty years ago in the Gothic style, I 
was much struck with the portrait of a female ancestor of the present 
earl, who must have been lovely and no less original ; for she is painted 
in deep mourning, and yet she sits smiling at a window with this inscrip- 
tion in old English : " Since my husband's love was but a jest, so is my 
mourning but a jest." 

Young Mr. Phipps told me that a strange accident occurred on a ridge 
of slate-rocks which run into the sea near the house. — Two girls were 
sitting on a cliff with their backs to the sea ; a sharp fragment of the slate 
split off from the rock high above them, and falling with increasing velocity 
cut off the head of one of them, (who was earnestly talking to the other,) 
so clean, that it rolled to a distance on the sand, while the trunk remained 
unmoved. The parents are still living in the village. 

Ripon, Sept. 27th. 

I slept through the night very well in my carriage, breakfasted in the 
garden of a pretty inn, and then hastened to Studley Park, which contains 
the famous ruins of Fountain's Abbey, esteemed the largest and most 
beautiful in England. They far exceeded my expectation, as did the 
park. — I must describe them to you as I saw them. 

The way leads through a majestic wood, first to a steep hill, and then, 
at an abrupt turn, to a green valley about three or four hundred feet wide, 
in the centre of which is a little river broken into various natural water- 
falls. On one side of the valley is a considerable chain of hills, over- 
grown with venerable ashes, beeches, and oaks ; on the other, an abrupt 
wall of rock overhung with trailing plants, and also crowned with old 
trees. The whole end of the valley is closed by the ruins and the lofty 



204 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

towers of the abbey. You will easily form some conception of the vast- 
ness of these ruins, when I tell you that the buildings belonging to the 
abbey, when entire, covered fifteen acres of ground, and that the ruins 
now cover four. The nave of the church, great part of the walls of 
which are still standing, is three hundred and fifty-one feet in length, the 
oriel window fifty feet high, and the tower, though partly fallen down, a 
hundred and sixty-six feet high. The architecture is of the best period — 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — as simple as it is grand. A gate- 
way leads from the church to the cloister, three hundred feet long and 
forty-two wide ; a second to the cloister garden, which is cultivated as a 
flower-garden by its present possessor, and surrounded by various pictur- 
esque ruins, — the library, court and chapter-house. The vaulted ceiling of 
the latter, like the Romer in Marienburg, is supported by a single pillar 
in the centre. The groined roof of the kitchen is constructed, with con- 
summate skill, without any support. Near it is the magnificent confec- 
tory, a hundred and eight feet long and forty-five wide : — this was, of 
course, the crown and glory of the abbey, which was famed for its luxury 
and dissoluteness. In the church are many monuments — one of Lord 
Mowbray in full chain armour, carved in stone ; further on, several abbots ; 
and lastly, a stone coffin, which contained the mortal remains of Harry 
Percy. Above it is an angel, in good preservation, and beneath it the 
date 1283, very distinct. At the top of the tower is a Latin inscription 
in gigantic Gothic letters, which proclaims from on high these beautiful 
and appropriate words, " Glory and praise to God alone through all ages !" 
The whole ruin is hung with draperies of ivy and creeping plants, and 
majestic trees here and there wave their tops above it. The river winds 
by, and a few steps further on, turns the old abbey-mill, which is still in 
use ; as if to teach the lesson, that when power and magnificence pass 
away, the useful retains its modest existence. At a short distance behind 
the abbey stands the old dwelling of the proprietor, which was built out 
of the fallen stones of the ruins in the sixteenth century. This, too, is 
highly picturesque, though of course in a far less noble style. Its walled 
gardens with their high-cut yew hedges, and regular, trim flower-beds ; 
and the mixture of objects comparatively modern, yet now fast acquiring 
a claim to antiquity, give the fancy an agreeable and spacious field to ex- 
patiate in. Here are perhaps the oldest yews in England. One, which 
is thought to be a thousand years old, is thirty feet in circumference in 
the thickest part of its stem. Among the carvings in the house are those 
of two old knights taken from the abbey, with the inscription, probably 
modern, ' Sic transit gloria mundi.' The decay of Fountain's Abbey, too, 
is to be attributed to the suppression of monasteries under Henry the 
Eighth. 

Leaving the abbay, in half an hour you reach a beautiful and finely 
kept pleasure-ground, which is rendered peculiarly delightful by its di- 
versity of hill and vale, noble trees, and well-placed clumps ; though 
rather encumbered with a multitude of old-fashioned summer-houses, 
temples, and worthless leaden statues. In one of these temples, dedicated 
to the Gods of antiquity, stands a bust of — Nero ! But these slight defects 
might easily be removed, while such a combination of natural beauty can 
rarely be met with. At the end of the deer-park stands the house of 
the proprietress, an elderly single lady of large fortune. 1 met her in the 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 205 

garden, and was invited by her to luncheon, which I gladly accepted, as 
my long walk had made me very hungry. 

To return to the ruin. — Giving way to my critical vein, I must add 
one thing, — which is, that while too little care is bestowed upon Whitby, 
too much is bestowed upon this. Not a loose stone lies on the ground, 
which is mowed as smooth as a carpet. The old cloister garden i* laid 
out in a too modern taste ; and were this poetic structure mine, I would 
immediately set out about creating a little more artificial wildness about 
it ; for the whole ought to partake of that air of half-decayed grandeur 
which has the greatest power over the imagination. 

After my return to Ripon I visited the church there — another beau- 
tiful remnant of antiquity, with a choir full of the richest carvings. 
There is a subterranean arched room — a sort of catacomb, adorned with 
skulls and bones, — in which I busied myself a long while with my fa- 
vourite craniological researches. Among these human ruins was a skull 
so strikingly like my own, that it even struck the clerk. What may 
the old boy have been 1 — perhaps myself in another garment 1 Nobody 
could give me any account of this house of bone. There was the genuine 
French skull of an emigrant priest, which the clerk himself had smug- 
gled in. He looked so polite and so talkative, that I fancied he would 
have said, ' Monsieur, j'ai l'honneur de vous presenter mes respects ; 
vous etes trop poli de venir nous rendre visite. Nous avons si rarement 
l'occasion de causer ici !' It was a well bred skull — that you saw at 
the first glance ; my portrait, on the other hand, looked very thought- 
ful and silent. It would be odd enough if one thus stood over one's own 
old bones. 

Harrowgate, Sept. 28th. 

This bathing place is much after the fashion of ours, and more social 
than most of the English ones. People meet at ' table d'hote,' at tea, 
and at the waters, and thus easily become acquainted. The place con- 
sists of two villages, both pretty and cheerful, and situated in a beauti- 
ful fertile country. Unfortunately, the weather is now dreadful : it rains 
incessantly ; and the sulphureous water 1 drank to-day has made me so 
ill that I cannot leave my room. 

September 29th. 

These waters do not agree with me at all ; nevertheless, I made my 
way to-day to the World's End, a short walk here, — ' The World's End' 
being only a neighbouring village, with a pretty view into — the world's 
beginning ; for as it is round, you may make it begin and end where 
you will. At ' table d'hote' I met about seventy other persons. Though 
the season is nearly over, there are still about a thousand visitors, most 
of them of the middle classes ; for Harrowgate is not one of the fashion- 
able watering places, though it seems to me far more pleasant than the 
most fashionable Brighton. 

An old General of eighty, who was my neighbour at dinner, interested 
me extremely. He had met with Frederick the Great, Kaunitz, the 
Emperor Joseph, Mirabeau, and Napoleon, on various occasions of his 
life, and told me many interesting particulars about them. He had like- 
wise been Governor of Surinam, and of the Isle of France ; had com- 



206 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

manded for a long time in India, and was now what we call General of 
Infantry, (next rank to a Field-Marshal.) All this would give him a 
high station with us : — here, no such thing ; and this he remarked him- 
self. " Here," said he, " the aristocracy is every thing : without family 
influence, without connexion, without some person of rank by whom a 
man may be pushed, he may indeed attain a high rank in the army ; but, 
except under some very peculiar circumstances, this gives him no con- 
sideration. I am only a baronet," added he ; " yet that empty and tri- 
fling hereditary title gives me more consideration than my long services 
or my high military rank ; and I am not called General, — or, as I should 
be with you, ' Ever ExcellenzJ — but Sir Charles." 

After dinner the company re-assembled to tea, which ended with a little 
dance. 

Leeds, Oct. 1st. 

I remained in Harrowgate so long, chiefly in expectation of letters 

from you, as I had given L that address. To-day, then, I found one 

on my return from my walk : you can think the joy it gave me. 

I have accompanied you in thought to Dresden, and drunk your health 
before the illuminated letters of your name. It is one of my strange pecu- 
liarities, that though I was four years in garrison at D , I never saw 

either Pillnitz or Moritzburg ; so that your description of the latter, with 
the old Landvoigt, was very interesting to me. 

You reproach me with liking better to write than to speak upon cer- 
tain subjects. You are right on the whole. But this affair, — and indeed 
all sorts of petitioning, — is so contrary to my nature, that I speak awk- 
wardly and ill, and do better if I write. Besides, failure is not so dis- 
agreeable. — But back to my journey. 

The magnificent seats in England are really almost countless. One 
must confine oneself to the most remarkable. Ten miles from Harrowgate 
I found Harewood Park, a delightful residence ; — fine natural wood, with 
glens, rocks, a copious mountain stream, the ruin of an old castle on a hill, 
— all situated in the richest country, and with distant views of the Cum- 
berland mountains. 

The scene was enlivened in a striking manner. Just as I drove past 
the house, I saw the possessor, Lord Harewood, with his pack of a hun- 
dred hounds, his red-coated huntsmen, and a number of high-mettled 
horses coming down a hill, on their return from a fox-hunt. I could not 
avoid going up to him to explain the cause of my being here. I found a 
tall handsome man, of remarkably winning air, in appearance and man- 
ner young and active, in years (which one must be assured of to believe 
it,) sixty-five. He received me with singular courtesy, said he had had 
the pleasure of seeing me several times in London, ('je n'en savais pas 
un mot,') and begged me to allow him to show me his park. I entreated 
him not to give himself the trouble, after the toils of the chase (in which 
men generally ride five or six German miles full gallop, and leap fifty or 
sixty hedges and ditches :) but all my entreaties were vain ; and this fine 
old man accompanied me, up hill and down dale, over the whole of his 
princely domain. What interested me most, as being new to me, was the 
kennel. Here I saw a hundred and fifty dogs in two perfectly clean rooms, 
each containing a large bed for seventy-five dogs, and each having its own 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 207 

enclosure in front. There was not the slightest offensive smell, nor the 
least dirt. In each yard was a tub with running water, and a man armed 
with a broom, whose whole business it is to keep the ground continually- 
washed, for which purpose he can let the water flow over it at pleasure. 
The dogs are accustomed to perfect obedience, and keep their bed and 
room very clean. It is a great art to feed them properly ; for to sustain 
their .great exertions, they must be kept very lean, and yet their flesh 
ought to be as firm as iron. This was perfectly accomplished here ; and 
there could not be a more beautiful sight than these slender, obedient, and 
happy-looking animals, half of whom were just returned from the chase, 
and yet seemed quite unwearied. They all lay however on their huge 
common bed, and looked at us affectionately, wagging their tails ; while 
the other half sprang eagerly and wildly forward, into their court. The 
stables too, built in a quadrangle at a little distance from the house, were 
very fine, and contained about thirty noble horses. My carriage had fol- 
lowed, and Lord Harewood now gave the postillion instructions which way 
to drive through the park, that I might see the most beautiful points, and 
then sauntered home accompanied by two great water-dogs and a jet-black 
spaniel. He was in fox-hunting costume, — a scarlet coat that looks like a 
livery. 

I forgot to say that we had first made a tour through the house, which 
is richly and handsomely furnished, and contains family pictures by Van- 
dyk, Reynolds, and Lawrence, the three best painters of England in their 
several centuries. There was one work of art in the principal apartment 
quite peculiar, — red curtains painted on wood, so admirably executed that 
Rauch himself would have been astounded at the flow of the drapery. 
Though I was told what they were, I could scarcely believe it till I con- 
vinced myself by the touch, so completely deceptive was the imitation 
of the silken stuff. Another uncommon decoration consisted in having 
the ceilings of all the rooms of the same designs as the carpets ; a very 
expensive thing, if, as I imagine, the carpets were all woven after the 
pattern of the ceilings. 

The long drive through the park, a good league, was very delightful. 
The road lay at first along the lake, with a majestic view of the house, 
and then through the wood to the river, which forms various cascades and 
little lakes. The wood itself was full of variety, — now thick and almost 
impervious to the view ; then grove-like ; then open patches with a dense 
enclosure ; or young copse from which deer were peeping out ; or anon a 
long and narrow vista to the distant mountains. 

A nobleman thus situated is a dignified representative of his class ; and 
it is very natural that, thus favoured by nature and by fortune, he should 
appear kind, benevolent, respectable, and happy, like this noble Earl, 
whose image will always afford me as delightful and refreshing a subject 
of recollection, as the beautiful landscape it graces. 

Very different from the impression of the day, and yet not less agreea- 
ble, was that of the evening. I reached the great manufacturing town of 
Leeds just in the twilight. A transparent cloud of smoke was diffused 
over the whole space which it occupies, on and between several hills ; a 
hundred red fires shot upwards into the sky, and as many towering chim- 
neys poured forth columns of black smoke. 

The huge manufactories, five stories high, in which every window was 



208 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

illuminated, had a grand and striking effect. Here the toiling artisan 
labours far into the night. And that some romantic features might not be 
wanting in the whirl of business and the illumination of industry, two 
ancient Gothic churches reared their heads above the mass of houses, 
and the moon poured her silver light upon their towers, and seemed to 
damp the hard glare of the busy crowed below, with her serene majesty. 
Leeds has near 120,000 inhabitants, and yet no representatives in par- 
liament, — because it is a new town : while, as it is well known, many a 
wretched ruined village sends two members, who are, of course, the crea- 
tures of the proprietor. Glaring and monstrous as is this nuisance, the 
statesmen of England have not yet dared to abate it ; perhaps because 
they fear that any change in so complicated a piece of machinery may be 
a dangerous operation, to which recourse should be had only in ex- 
treme necessity. 

Late in the Evening. 

I have adapted myself to many English customs, — among others, to 
cold dinners. As a change they are sometimes wholesome, and, being 
completely national, are almost always of excellent quality. To-day my 
solitary table was covered with no less than the following varieties ; a cold 
ham, an awful ' roast beef,' a leg of mutton, a piece of roast veal, a hare 
pie, a partridge, three sorts of pickle, cauli-flowers cooked in water, 
potatoes, butter, and cheese. That this would have been meat enough to 
feed a whole party of German burghers, ' saute aux yeux.' 

October 2nd. 

The first thing I saw this morning before my windows was the refined 
contrivance of a grocer, who had not been satisfied with exhibiting, like 
most of his brethren, a number of Chinese teachests, mandarins, and vases, 
but had put a piece of clockwork in his window, a stately automaton Turk 
diligently grinding coffee. From hence I proceeded on my further tour. 
First I visited the Market-hall, a beautiful building, in which the market 
is held under a glass roof; then the Cloth-hall, an immense room entirely 
filled with cloth of all sorts and colours ; and lastly, the largest cloth man- 
ufactory of the place, which is worked by three steam-engines. Here 
you begin with the raw material (the sorting of the wool,) and finish with 
the perfect cloth ; so that if you took a tailor with you, you might bring 
your wool in the manufactory in the morning, and come out with a coat 

made of it in the evening. Our friend R actually performed this 

feat, and wore the coat for a long time with great predilection. The 
various machines are ingenious in the highest degree ; but the stench and 
the unwholesome air, as well as the dust in many of the operatious, must 
be very unhealthy to the poor workmen, who moreover were all of a dark 
blue colour. The young man who showed me the manufactory said, how- 
ever, that the cotton manufactories were much more unhealthy, from the 
fine and subtle dust ; that in them a workman seldom reached his fiftieth 
year, whereas here there were instances of men of sixty. The Gothic 
churches which yesterday produced such an effect at a distance, presented 
nothing remarkable on a nearer inspection ; and the town itself, enveloped 
in an everlasting fog produced by the smoke, which never ceases day nor 
night, is the most disagreeable place you can imagine. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 209 



Rotherham : — Evening. 

Continuing my journey, I made the first halt at Templenewsome, a 
house of Elizabeth's time, belonging to the Dowager Marchioness of Hert- 
ford. This edifice has a great singularity ; instead of battlements, a stone 
gallery surrounds the roof, consisting of letters which compose a sentence 
from the Bible. The park is melancholy, and the furniture of the house 
old-fashioned, without being interesting. I found nothing remarkable in 
the picture-gallery, but in the other rooms there were some interesting- 
portraits : both the Guises, the uncles of Mary of Scotland ; General 
Monk, who is strikingly like our old friend Thielemann; and Lord Darnley 
(Mary's husband,) to whom this castle belonged; it hangs in the room in 
which he was born. I had a very bad headache ; for which reason, per- 
haps, a second park, Stainbrook, appeared to me dreary and uncomfort- 
able, nor could I admire the pictures. The road then led me through a 
series of manufacturing places, which looked like burning towns and vil- 
lages. Rotherham itself, where I now am, is celebrated for its great iron- 
works, and I intend to see some of them to-morrow, if my illness goes off. 

October 3rd. 

After having walked half a German mile to the largest iron-work, I un* 
luckily found the engine stopped, in consequence of the furnace having re- 
ceived some damage yesterday. I could therefore see but little, and went 
a mile further on to the steel-works. Here the steam-engine had just got 
out of order, and the operations were likewise suspended. So I wandered 
on again to the thread and linen manufactory ; and my own astonishment, 
as well as that of my guide, was not small, when we perceived no signs of 
working here also, and heard that the great spindle had been broken in the 
morning. With this extraordinary ' guignon' ended my useless efforts to 
instruct myself for to-day; indeed there was no time to make any more. 

Sheffield : — Evening. 

I rode from Rotherham to Wentworth House, the seat of Lord Fitz- 
william, another truly regal domain, for extent, richness, and splendour; 
but (like many English parks) melancholy and monotonous ; the immense 
tracts of grass, with a few scattered trees, and the tame sheep-like deer 
grazing upon them, in time become intolerable. Certainly, it is a most 
tasteless custom to have these green deserts extend on one side up to the 
very houses ; it makes them look like enchanted palaces, inhabited by deer 
instead of men. It is easier to give oneself up to this notion since there is 
seldom a human being to be seen outside the house, which is usually shut 
up, so that you are often obliged to ring at the door for a quarter of an 
hour before you can get admittance, or the Lady ' Chatelaine' appears to 
play the cicerone, and receive her fee. Wentworth House is adorned with 
many valuable statues and pictures. Amongst others, a beautiful picture 
by Vandyk, representing the builder of the castle, Lord Strafford, just as 
sentence of death has been announced to him : he is holding the fatal scroll 
in his hand, and dictating to his secretary his last will. Another picture 
represents his son, a beautiful boy of sixteen, in a most becoming mourning 
dress, — black, with rich lace, fawn-coloured boots, a tight enamelled collar, 
a short cloak, a rich sword, and a scarf ' en bandouliere.' 

27 



210 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

The picture of a race-horse as large •bs life, painted on gray linen, and 
placed in a niche without a frame, really deceived me ; I thought it alive. 
This horse won so much, that the former lord built a quadrangle of mag- 
nificent stables, the most complete I have seen in this country, with the 
money. In these stables, which contain also a riding-school, stand sixty 
beautiful and picked horses. 

An excellent portrait of the vain and ambitious Cardinal Wolsey, and 
one of the fickle Duke of Buckingham, are very interesting. The house- 
keeper, pointing to the portrait of Harvey, said : " This is the man who 
invented the circulation of the blood." One would like to make that man's 
acquaintance. 

In the flower-gardens 1 found some beautiful parts ; amongst others, an 
enclosure made of wire-fence, running along the gay parterres, peopled 
with foreign birds, a clear brook flowing through it, and planted with ever- 
greens, on which the feathered inhabitants could sport at pleasure. 

Several black swans, which have already reared four young ones, were 
swimming on a small pond near it. They seem to be completely accus- 
tomed to this climate. I was struck by a common beech on the banks of 
the water, which, by early polling, had completely changed its character. 
It was very low, but its branches stretched out on all sides, so as to cover 
an immense space, and form a regularly leafy tent of unequalled beauty. 
A fir, polled in the same manner, had attained a beauty far greater than 
that of its natural growth. 

I arrived in good time at Sheffield, where, from the quantity of smoke, 
the sun appeared shorn of his beams. I looked at the astonishing produc- 
tions in cutlery ; as, for instance, a knife with a hundred and eighty blades ; 
scissors which cut perfectly and can be used, though hardly visible with 
the naked eye, &c. &c. In defiance of superstition, I bought you needles 
and scissors enough for your whole life, with some other newly-invented 
trifles, which I am sure will please you. 

Nottingham, Oct. Ath. 

I rode the whole night, and saw only from a distance, and by moonlight, 
Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron's birth-place and family seat, now much 
neglected. 

Besides the Gothic church (of which nearly every English town posses- 
ses one, more or less beautiful,) there is not much to be seen in Notting- 
ham ; a remarkable manufactory of net excepted, where the steam-engines 
do all the work, and only a single man stands by the machinery to take 
care that nothing goes wrong. 

It is most strange to see the iron monsters begin to work, as if moved 
by invisible hands, and the most beautiful lace, stretched in a frame, comes 
slowly forth at the top, neat and finished ; while the spindles, with the raw 
thread wound round them, keep on their perpetual motion below ; the 
whole unaided, as I have said, by a single human hand. 

It was just the time of the Fair, which had drawn together a great 
number of curiosites ; among others, a beautiful collection of wild beasts. 
Two Bengal tigers, of an enormous size, were so perfectly tame, that even 
ladies and children were allowed to enter their cage, or the animals were 
let out in the riding school where the collection was exhibited. No dog 
could be more gentle ; but I doubt whether our police would have suffered 






IRELAND AND FRANCE. 211 

such experiments. A remarkable animal was the horned horse, or Nyl 
Ghau, from the Himalaya mountains, — handsome and fleet, and in some 
respects very strangely formed. The beautiful wild ass of Persia, which 
they say is swifter and more untireable than a horse, and can live for 
weeks without food, was new to me. There were also here, as in the col- 
lection of animals on the Pfaueninsel near Berlin, a giant and a dwarf. 

London, Oct. GtJi. 

Before I left Nottingham I visited the neighbouring seat of Lord Mid- 
dleton, which is worth seeing. The park offered little remarkable. 
There was a curious old picture — a faithful portrait of the house and gar- 
dens as they existed two hundred years ago. It is very interesting ; the 
more so, as you see the family in the strangest dresses, with a great com- 
pany and numerous attendants, walking in the garden, and as the noble 
owner therein represented is the same who is so often mentioned in 
connexion with the celebrated ghost story. Every one ought to have 
pictures of this kind painted for his successors : the comparisons they 
suggest are always amusing, and sometimes instructive. 

I reached St. Albans in the night, and saw the celebrated Abbey by the 
light of the moon, and of lanterns. The clerk was quickly awakened, and 
conducted me thither. I first admired the exterior of the building, built 
by the Saxons, in the eighth century, of indestructible Roman bricks, and 
then entered the imposing interior. The nave of the church is doubtless 
one of the largest in the world ; it is more than six hundred feet long. 
There are many beautiful stone carvings; and although little could be 
distinctly seen by so feeble a light, the general effect by this strange and 
uncertain illumination, with our dark figures in the middle, and the sounds 
of the midnight bell from the tower, was most romantic and awful. 

This was still more the case when we descended into the vault where, 
in an open leaden coffin, lies the skeleton of the Duke of Gloucester who 
was poisoned six hundred years ago by Cardinal Beaufort. Time has 
rendered it as brown and smooth as polished mahogany ; and curious 
antiquarians have already robbed it of several bones. The clerk, who 
was an Irishman, seized one of the leg-bones without ceremony, and brand- 
ishing it in the air like a cudgel, he remarked that this bone had become 
so beautiful and hard with time, that it would make an excellent shillelah. 
What would the haughty Duke have said, if he could have known how his 
remains would be treated by such ignoble hands ? The magnificent oak 
ceiling, more than 1000 years old, is a glorious proof of the solid archi- 
tecture of those times. It is still as beautiful and perfect as if there were 
no cyphers after the unit. The painted windows, with the golden tomb 
of St. Alban, were unhappily almost entirely destroyed in Cromwell's time. 

I reached London early enough to repose half the night ; and my first 
business in the morning was to finish this letter, already swollen to a 
packet. In a few hours I hope it will be on its way. 

Do not be impatient therefore ; and receive this letter with the same 
affectionate indulgence as its numerous predecessors. 

Your faithful L 



212 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

LETTER XX. 

London, Nov. 1st, 1827. 

A Frenchman says; "L'illusion fut inventee pour le bonheur cleg 
mortels ; elle leur fait presqu' autant de bien que l'esperance." If this is 
true, happy man is my dole, for I am never at a loss for illusions or hopes. 

Some of these have certainly been thrown to the winds by your letter ; 
but be of good courage, there is already a fresh crop of new ones springing 
up as fast as mushrooms. — More of them anon. 

Concerning the intolerable, sleepy President, I cannot possibly write 
from hence. Besides, as a dandy would say, the man is not ' fashionable' 
enough. And indeed you manage all these affairs so admirably, that it 
were a shame not to leave them entirely to you. This is selfishness on 

my part, but of a pardonable sort, since its is advantageous to us both * 

###■*■#,#*#*#### 

During the last few days 1 have made a little excursion to Brighton, 
taking a circuitous route back. Arundel Castle, the seat of the Duke of 
Norfolk, was one of the objects of my curiosity. It has some points of re- 
semblance to Warwick, but is far inferior to it, though of equal antiquity. 
Here also is an artifical mound and keep, at the eastern end. The view 
from the top of the round ruined tower must be magnificent, but to-day 
the fog rendered it impossible to see it ; indeed I could not even distinguish 
the terrace gardens surrounding the castle : I therefore consoled myself in 
the company of a dozen large tame horned owls, which inhabit what was 
once the warder's room. One of them has been here these fifty years, is 
very amiable, and barked when he wanted any thing, exactly like a dog. 
The English are great lovers of animals, — a taste in which I entirely 
sympathize. Thus, in many parks you find colonies of rooks, which hover 
round the house or castle in vast flights, and are in very good keeping 
with an ancient castle and its towering trees ; though their cawing is not the 
most agreeable music in the world. The interior of Arundel Castle has 
nothing very distinguished. The numerous painted windows are modern ; 
and among the family pictures only one struck me, — that of the accom- 
plished Lord Surrey, put to death by Henry the Eighth, the costume of 
which was very singular. 

The library is small, but very magnificent ; wainscoted with cedar, 
and ornamented with beautiful carving and painting ; in short, it wanted 
nothing but books, of which there not more than a few hundreds. 

A very large but very simple hall, called the Baron's Hall, has a great 
number of painted windows, the merit of which is not remarkable. 

In the apartments there was a quantity of old furniture, preserved with 
great care to prevent its falling to pieces, in its frail condition. This 
fashion is now general in England. Things which we should throw away 
as old-fashioned and worm-eaten, here fetch high prices, and new ones are 
often made after the old patterns. In venerable mansions, when not de- 
structive of convenience, they have a very good effect. In modern build- 
ings they are ludicrous. 

The old part of the castle is said to have been a Roman fort, and many 
Roman bricks are found in the walls. In later times it was still a place 
of defence, and sustained several sieges. The modern part, in the style of 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 213 

the ancient, was built by the predecessor of the present duke, and cost, as 
I was told, eight hundred thousand pounds. The same thing might cer- 
tainly have been done in Germany for three hundred thousand reichs- 
thalers. The garden appeared to me diversified and extensive, and the 
park is said to be very noble and picturesque, but the horrid weather 
hindered me from seeing it. In the evening I drove to Petworth, where 
there is another fine house. I write from the inn, where I was settled in 
a few minutes as if at home, for my travelling arrangements and conveni- 
ences have been greatly perfected since my residence in England. 

Petivorth House, Oct. 26. 

Colonel C— — came to my inn early in this morning, and reproached 

me with not driving straight to the house of his father-in-law, Lord E , 

the owner of Petworth House. He pressed me so kindly to spend at least 
a day there, that I could not refuse. My luggage was soon transported 
thither, and I as quickly installed in my room. It is a fine modern palace, 
with a noble collection of pictures and antiques, and a large park which 
contains a celebrated stud. I was peculiarly struck with three of the 
pictures, — Henry the Eighth, a full-length, by Holbein, remarkable for 
the exquisite painting of the dress and ornaments, and the fresh masterly 
colouring : a portrait of the immortal Newton, which is far less distinguish- 
ed for its expression of intelligence, than for its pre-eminently elegant and 
gentlemanly air ; and one of Maurice of Orange, so like our poet Houwald 
that it might pass for him. The mixture of statues and pictures which is 
common here, is disadvantageous to both. 

Among the curiosities is a family relic, — the great sword of Harry 

Percy, an ancestor of Lord E -'s. The library served, as usual, as 

drawing-room, — a very rational and agreeable plan. It was fitted up ac- 
cording to your taste, — only the best modern books, in elegant bindings ; 
for all others there was another room upstairs. 

The freedom in this house was perfect, which rendered it doubly agree- 
able to me. One really feels not the slightest ' gene.' There were many 
guests of both sexes. The host himself is a learned and accomplished con- 
noisseur in art, and at the same time a very conspicuous and successful 
man ' on the turf.' In his stud I saw a horse about thirty years old, 
{' Whalebone,) who was obliged to be supported by several grooms when 
he attempted to walk, and whose foals still unborn, fetch enormous sums. 
That's what I call a glorious old age. ' Au reste,' the regulations of the 
stud are very different here from ours. With all your appetite for know, 
ledge, however, this ' thema' might interest you little, so that I shall go 
on to other matters. 

On the following day, arrived the Duchess of St. A , a woman 

whose ever ascending fortunes have been remarkable enough. The 
earliest recollections of her infancy are those of a deserted, starving, 
shivering child, in a solitary barn in an English village. Thence she was 
taken by a band of gipsies ; — quitting them, she entered a strolling com- 
pany of players. By her agreeable person, high spirits, and original 
humour, she gained some reputation in her new profession, gradually secured 
patronage and friends, and lived in long and undisturbed connexion with 
a rich banker, who at length married her, and at his death left her seventy 
thousand a year. This enormous fortune afterwards promoted her to be 



214 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the wife of the third English Duke, and (by a curious coincidence) the 
descendant of the celebrated actress Nell Gwynne, to whose charms the 
Duke owes his title, in the same manner as his wife has acquired hers. 

She is a very good-natured woman, who is not ashamed to speak of the 
past — on the contrary, alludes to it perhaps rather too much. 

After an agreeable visit of three days, I returned hither, and now cele- 
brate my birth-day in the profoundest solitude, with closed doors. Three- 
fourths of my melancholy fits I may certainly ascribe to the month in 
which I first saw the light. May children are far more cheerful : I never saw 
a hypochondriacal son of the Spring. A song called Prognostica once 
fell into my hands : 1 am very sorry I did not keep it ; for it told a man's 
fortune according to the month of his birth. I only remember that those 
born in October were to have a melancholy temper, and that the prophecy 
began thus : — 

" Ein Junge geboren im Monat October 
Wird eim Critiker, und das ein recht grober."* 

I leave you now for a great dinner at Prince E 's, for I will not de- 
vote the. whole day to solitude; I am too superstitious for that. Adieu. 

November ^th. 

In my quality of Chevalier de St. Louis, 1 was invited to-day to a great 

dinner at Prince P 's, in commemoration of the Saint's day, or the 

'jour de fete' of the king of France, — I really don't know which. After 
it, I went to see the Continvation of Don Juan at Drury Lane. ' Of course' 
the first act was laid in hell, where Don Juan immediately seduces the Fu- 
ries, and at last, even the devil's grandmother, for which offence he is 
forcibly ejected by His Satanic Majesty. Just as he reaches the pictur- 
esque shores of the fire-rolling Styx, Charon is in the act of ferrying over 
three female souls from London. While they are landing, Don Juan oc- 
cupies the old ferryman's attention with changing a bank-note (for paper 
money is current in the infernal regions,) seizes the moment to make off 
with them from the shore, and conducts them back to earth. Arrived in 
London, he has his usual adventures, — duels, elopements, &c. ; the eques- 
trian statue at Charing Cross invites him to tea ; but his creditors carry 
him off to the King's Bench, whence he is delivered by marrying a rich 
wife, in whom he at length finds that full punishment for all his sins which 
hell could not afford. Madame Vestris as Don Juan is the prettiest and 
most seductive young fellow you can imagine, and, it is easy to see, does 
not want practice. 

The piece amused me. Still more amusing was a new novel which I 
found on my table, the scene of which is laid in the year 2200, — not a very 
new idea, certainly. 

It represents the religion of England as once more Catholic, the govern- 
ment an absolute monarchy, and universal education so diffused, that learn- 

* A boy born in the month of October 
Will be a critic, and a right surly one. — Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 215 

ing is become the common property of the lower classes. Every artisan 
works upon mathematical or chemical principles. Footmen and cooks, 
with such names as Abelard and Heloisa, speak in the syle of the Jenaer 
Literaturzeitung. On the other hand, it is the fashion among the higher 
classes, by way of distinguishing themselves from the ' plebs,' to use the 
most vulgar language and expressions, and carefully to conceal any know- 
ledge that goes beyond reading and writing. There is some wit in this 
idea, and perhaps it is prophetic. The habits of life of this class are also 
very simple. Few and homely dishes appear on all their tables, and luxury 
is to be met with only at those of the servants. That air-balloons are the 
common conveyances, and- that steam governs the world, are matters of 
course. 

A German professor, however, makes a discovery in galvanism, by 
which he is enabled to bring the dead to life ; and the mummy of King 
Cheops, recently found in a pyramid which had remained unopened, is the 
first person on whom this experiment is tried. How the living mummy 
comes to England, and how horribly he behaves there, you may read when 
the novel is translated into German. ' Au reste,' I often feel like a mummy 
myself, — bound hand and foot, and eagerly waiting my release. 

Nov. 5th. 

Such a fog covered the whole town this morning that I could not see to 
breakfast without candles. Going out till evening was not to be thought 

of. I was invited to dinner at : P was there too, to whom 

she generally shows great hostility, I know not why. To-day, with his 
usual ' etourderie,' he ruined himself for ever. The lady has, as you may 
remember, rather a red nose, which the malicious have ascribed to the 

custom with which General Pillett reproaches Englishwomen. P 

probably did not know this, and remarked that she mixed a dark liquid 
with her wine. In the innocence — or the wickedness — of his heart, he 
asked her whether she was so much of an Englishwoman as to mix her 
wine with Cognac. It was not till he remarked the redness diffuse itself 
over her whole face, and the embarrassment of those who sat near, that he 
was conscious of his ' bevue ;' for the innocent beverage was toast and 
water. This suggested to me the ludicrous directions given by a book of 
Rules for Good Behaviour, written in our pedantic national manner. 
" When you go into company," says the author, " be sure to inform your- 
self accurately beforehand concerning the persons you are likely to meet; 
their parentage, connexions, foibles, faults, and peculiarities ; so that you 
may not, on the one hand, say any thing unknowingly which may touch a 
sore place, and on the other, may be able to flatter in an easy and appro- 
priate manner." 

Laughably expressed enough, and difficult to accomplish, but not a bad 
precept ! 

There was a great deal of political talk, particularly of this dashing 
commencement of a war, by the destruction of the Turkish fleet. 

How inconsistent is the language of Englishmen on this subject ! But 
ever since the fall of Napoleon the leading politicians do not seem to know 
rightly what they would be at. The miserable results of their Congresses 
do not satisfy even them ; but yet there has appeared no original mind ca- 
pable of making these meetings conduce to more important consequences; 



210 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

no master-will to guide them ; and the fate of Europe depends no longer 
on its leaders, but on chance. Canning was but a transient vision ; and 
how are his successors employed ? The destruction of the fleet of an old 
and faithful ally, without a declaration of war, is the best proof; though, 
as man and Philhellene, I heartily rejoice at it. 

But amid all these political abortions, this tottering and vacillating of 
all parts, we shall certainly live to witness still more extraordinary things ; 
— perhaps combinations which have hitherto been deemed impossible. 
This is partly to be ascribed to Canning himself, — for his plans were not 
matured ; and a man of eminent genius is always detrimental to his suc- 
cessors when they are pygmies. The present Ministers have completely 
the air of wishing to lead England slowly into the pit which Canning dug 
for others. 

Even the very storm which they have been gathering on the boundaries 
of Asia, will perhaps burst most furiously over the centre of Europe. I 
hope however the God of the thunder will be with us. The future pros- 
pects of Prussia appear to my anticipations far higher and more glorious 
than any fate has yet granted her ; only let her never lose sight of her 
motto, " Vorwiirts." 

On returning home I found your letter, which amused me much ; espe- 
cially K 's sallies, vainly bottled up in Paris to be let loose in S , 

where they find so little success ; for indeed you are right," 

" Rien de plus triste qu'un bon mot 
Qui se perd dans l'orielle d'une sot." 

And that he may experience often enough. 

Oct. 29tL 

As one has now time to go to the theatre, and the best actors are play- 
ing, I devote many of my evenings to this aesthetic pastime. Last night I 
saw with renewed pleasure Kemble's artist-like representation of Falstarf, 
about which I once wrote to you. I must however mention, that his dress 
of white and red, — very ' recherche,' though a little worn, combined with 
his handsome curling white hair and beard, — gave him a happy mixture of 
the gentleman and the droll, which in my opinion greatly heightened, and, 
so to say, refined the effect. 

Generally speaking, the costume was excellent ;— on the other hand it 
must be admitted to be an unpardonable destruction of all illusion, that as 
soon as Henry the Fourth, with his splendid Court, and his train of knights, 
brilliant in steel and gold, quit the stage, two servants in theatrical live- 
ries, with shoes and red stockings, come on to take away the throne. I 
found it just as impossible to reconcile myself to hearing Lord Percy ad- 
dress the King, who was sitting at the back of the stage, for a quarter of 
an hour, during the whole of which time I never could catch sight of any- 
thing but his back. It is remarkable that the most celebrated actors here 
regularly affect this offensive practice ; while with us they run into the 
contrary fault, and the ' primo amoroso' during the most ardent declara- 
tion of love, turns his back on his mistress to ogle the audience. To hit 
the right medium is certainly difficult, and the stage arrangements ought 
to assist the actor. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 217 

Of the character of Percy, German actors generally make a sort of mad 
calf, who behaves both towards his wife and towards the King as if he had 
been bitten by a mad dog. These men don't know when to soften, and 
when to heighten the effects of the poet. Young understands this tho- 
roughly, and knows perfectly how to unite the stormy vehemence of the 
youth with the dignity of the hero and the high bearing of the prince. He 
suffered the electric fire to dart in lightnings from the thunder-cloud, but 
not to degenerate into a pelting hail-storm. They appear to me, too, to 
act together here, better than on the German stage, and many of the 
scenic arrangements seemed to me judicious. 

To give you one example : — you remember (for we once saw this play 
together at Berlin) the scene in which the King receives Percy's messen- 
gers. You thought it so indecorous that Falstaff should be continually 
pressing forward before, and up to, the King, and rudely interrupting him 
every moment with his jokes. The cause of this was, that our actors 

think so much more of their persons than of their parts. Herr D 

feels himself ' every inch a King' in comparison with Herr M ; and 

forgets whom they severally represent at the moment. Here Shakspeare 
is better understood, and the scene more appropriately represented. The 
King stands with the ambassadors in the front of the stage; the Court is 
scattered in groups ; and midway on one side are the Prince and Falstaff. 
The latter cracks his jokes, as a half-privileged buffoon ; but rather ad- 
dresses them in an under voice to the Prince than directly to the King : 
when addressed by him, he immediately assumes the respectful attitude 
suited to his station, and does not affect to fraternize with his sovereign as 
with an equal. 

In this manner you can give in to the illusion of seeing a Court before 
you ; in the other, you think yourself still in Eastcheap. Tbe actors here 
live in better society and have more tact. 

Nov. 23d. 

It is curious enough that men regard that alone as a wonder which is 
at a distance from them, in time or space ; the daily wonders near them 
they pass by unheeded. Yet we must be now living in the clays of the 
Arabian Nights., for I have seen a creature to-day far surpassing all the 
fantastic beings of that time. 

Listen what are the monster's characteristics. In the first place, its 
food is the cheapest possible, for it eats nothing but wood or coals. When 
not actually at work, it requires none. It never sleeps, nor is weary ; it 
is subject to no diseases, if well organized at first, and never refuses its 
work till it becomes incapable by great length of service. It is equally 
active in all climates, and undertakes every kind of labour without a mur- 
mur. Here it is a miner, there a sailor, a cotton-spinner, a weaver, a 
smith, or a miller ; — indeed it performs the business of each and all of 
them ; and though a small creature, it draws ninety tons of goods, or a 
whole regiment of soldiers packed into carriages, with a swiftness exceed- 
ing that of the fleetest stage-coaches. At the same time it marks its own 
measured steps on a tablet fixed in front of it. It regulates, too, the de- 
gree of warmth necessary to its well-being : it has a strange power of 
oiling its inmost joints when they are stiff", and of removing at pleasure all 
injurious air which might find its way into its system ; — but should any 

28 



218 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

thing become deranged in it, it immediately warns its master by the loud 
ringing of a bell. Lastly, it is so docile, spite of its immense strength 
(nearly equal to that of six hundred horses,) that a child of four years old 
is able in a moment to arrest its mighty labours, by the pressure of his 
little finger. 

Would people formerly have believed that such a ministering spirit 
could be summoned by anything but Solomon's signet? or did ever a witch 
burnt for sorcery produce its equal? 

Now a new wonder. Only magnetise five hundred gold pieces with a 
strong will to change them into such a creature, and after a few prelimina- 
ry ceremonies, you will see him established in your service. The spirit 
ascends in vapour, but never vanishes. He remains your lawful slave for 
life. Such are the miracles of our times, which perhaps surpass many of 
the most extraordinary of former ages. 

I spent the evening at the house of Lady C B , who has just 

finished a new novel, called " Flirtation." I talked very frankly to her 
about it, for she is a clever and a good woman. #.'.*,.* 

I don't know whether I told you that I lodge at the house of a dress- 
maker in Albemarle-street, who has collected around her a perfect gar- 
land of English, French, and Italian girls. All is decorum itself; but 
there are many talents among them which can be turned to account — 
among others, that of a French girl, who has a genius for cooking, and 

has thus enabled me to entertain my kind friend L in my own little 

home. Dinner, concert (droll enough it was, for the performers were all 
' couturieres'), a little dance for the young ladies, a great many artificial 
flowers, a great many lights, a very few intimate friends ; — in short, a 
sort of rural fete in this busy town. The poor girls were delighted, and 
it was almost morning before they went to bed, though the duenna kept 
faithful watch and ward to the last moment. I was greatly praised and 
thanked by all ; though in their hearts they no doubt liked my young 
friend L much better. 

Nov. 28th. 

A great actor, — a true master of his art, certainly stands very high. 
What knowledge and power he must have ! How much genius must he 
unite with corporeal grace and address ! — how much creative power, with 
the most perfect knowledge of wearisome ' routine !' 

This evening, for the first time since my residence here, I saw Mac- 
beth, — perhaps the most sublime and perfect of Shakspeare's tragedies. 
Macready, who has lately returned from America, played the part admi- 
rably. The passages in which he appeared to me peculiarly true and 
powerful, were, first, the night-scene in which he comes on the stage after 
the murder of Duncan, with the bloody dagger, and tells his wife that he 
has done the deed. He carried on the whole conversation in a low voice, 
as the nature of the incident requires ; — like a whisper in the dark, — 
yet so dictinctly, and with such a fearful expression, that all the terrors 
of night and crime pass with the sound into the hearer's very soul. Not 
less excellent was the difficult part with Banquo's ghost. The fine pas- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 219 

" What man dare, I dare. 
Approach, then, like the rugged Russian bear, 
The arni'd rhinoceros, or Hyrcanian tiger ; 
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves 
Shall never tremble. Or be alive again, 
And dare me to the desert with thy sword ; 
If trembling I inhibit, then protest me 
The baby of a girl. Hence, terrible shadow ! 
Unreal mockery, hence !" &c. 

with great judgment he began with all the' vehemence of desperation ; 
then, overcome by terror, dropped his voice lower and lower, till the last 
words were tremulous and inarticulate. Then, uttering a subdued cry of 
mortal horror, he suddenly cast his mantle over his face and sank back 
half-lifeless on his seat. He thus produced the most apalling effect. As 
man, you felt tremblingly with him, that our most daring courage can op- 
pose nothing to the terrors of another world ; — you saw no trace of the 
stage-hero, who troubles himself little about nature ; and playing only to 
produce effect on the galleries, seeks his highest triumph in an ascending 
scale of noise and fury. Macready was admirable, too, in the last act ; 
in which conscience and fear are equally deadened and exhausted, and 
rigid apathy has taken the place of both ; when the last judgment breaks 
over the head of the sinner in three rapidly succeeding strokes, — the 
death of the Queen, the fulfilment of the delusive predictions of the witches, 
and Macduff's terrific declaration that he is not born of woman. 

What had previously tortured Macbeth's spirit — had made him mur- 
mer at his condition, or struggle against the |goadings of his conscience, 
— can now only strike him with momentary terror, like a lightning flash. 
He is weary of himself and of existence ; and fighting, as he says in bit- 
ter scorn, ' bear-like,' he falls at length, a great criminal — but withal a 
king and a hero. 

Equally masterly was the combat with Macduff, in which inferior actors 
commonly fail ; — nothing hurried, yet all the fire, nay, all the horror of the 
end, — of the final rage and despair. 

1 shall never forget the ludicrous effect of this scene at the first perfor- 
mance of Spiker's translation at Berlin. Macbeth and his antagonist set 
upon each other in such a manner, that, without intending it, they got 
behind the scenes before their dialogue was at an end; whence the words 
" Hold — enough !" (what went before them being inaudible,) sounded as if 
Macbeth was run down and had cried, (holding out his sword and depre- 
cating any further fighting,) " Leave off — hold — enough !" 

Lady Macbeth, though played by a second-rate actress, — for, alas ! 
since the departure of Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neil there is no first rate 
— pleased me better in her feeble delineation of the character, than many 
would-be-great ' artistes' of our fatherland, whose affected manner is suit- 
ed to no single character in Shakspeare- 

I do not, however, entirely participate in Tieck's well-known view of 
this character. I would fain go still deeper into it. Scarcely any man 
understands how the love of a woman sees every thitig solely as it regards 
or affects the beloved object ; and thence, for a time at least, knows virtue 
or vice only with relation to him. 

Lady Macbeth, represented as a furious Megaera who uses her husband 
only as an instrument of her own ambition, is wanting in all inward truth, 



220 XETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



and, still more, in all interest. Such a woman would be incapable of that 
profound feeling of her own crime and misery so fearfully expressed in the 
sleeping scene ; it is only in the presence of her husband, and in order to 
give him courage, that she always seems the stronger ; that she shows 
neither fear nor remorse ; that she jests at them in him, and seeks to 
deafen herself to their voice in her own heart. 

She is certainly not a gentle, feminine character ; but womanly love to 
her husband is nevertheless the leading motive of her actions. 

As the poet reveals to us her secret agonies in the night scene, so like- 
wise does he suffer us to perceive that Macbeth had long ago betrayed to 
her those ambitious wishes lurking in his breast, which he had scarcely 
confessed to himself: and thus it is that the witches choose Macbeth as 
their own, — as worms and moths attack what is already diseased and 
decaying, — only because they find him ripe for their purpose. She knows 
then, the inmost desires of his heart ; to satisfy him, she hurries with 
passionate vehemence to his aid, and, with all the devoted impetuosity of a 
woman, far outstrips even his thoughts. The more Macbeth falters and 
draws back — half acting a part with himself and with her, — the more is 
her zeal quickened ; she represents herself, to herself and to him, more 
cruel, more hard-hearted than she is ; and works herself up by artificial 
excitements, only that she may inspire him with the courage and deter- 
mination necessary to accomplish his ends. To him she is ready to sac- 
rifice not only all that stands between Macbeth and his wishes, but herself ; 
the peace of her own conscience— nay, all womanly thoughts and feelings 
towards others ; and to call the powers of darkness to aid and strengthen 
her. 

It is only when viewed in this manner that her character appears to me 
dramatic, or the progress of the piece psychologically true. Viewed in 
the other light, we find nothing in it but a caricature — a thing impossible 
to Shakspeare's creative spirit, which always paints possible men, and not 
unnatural monsters. or demons of the fancy. 

And thus do they mutually urge each down the precipice ; for neither, 
singly, would have fallen so far ; — Macbeth, however, manifestly with 
greater selfishness ; and therefore is his end, like his torment, the more 
painful. 

It is a great advantage to the performance of this piece when the part 
of Macbeth, and not that of the Lady, falls to the actor of genius. Of 
that I was strongly convinced to-day. If Lady Macbeth, by superiority 
of acting, is converted into the principal character, the whole tragedy is 
contemplated in a false point of view. It is something quite other than 
the real one, and loses the greatest part of its interest, when we see a 
ferocious amazon, and a hero under her slipper who suffers himself to be 
used as a mere tool of her projects. No, — in him lies the germ of the 
sin from the beginning ; his wife does but help him : he is by no means a 
man of originally noble temper, who, seduced by the witches, becomes a 
monster ; — but, as in Romeo and Juliet the passion of love is led from the 
innocent childishness of its first budding, in a mind too susceptible of its 
power, through all the stages of delight, to despair and death, — so in 
Macbeth the subject of the picture is self-seeking ambition fostered by 
powers of evil, passing from an innocence that was but apparent, and the 
fame of an honoured hero, to the blood-thirstiness of the tiger, and to the 



t 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 221 

end of a hunted wild beast. Nevertheless, the man in whose soul the 
poison works is gifted with so many lofty qualities, that we can follow the 
struggle and the developement with sympathy. What an inconceivable 
enjoyment would it be to see such a work of genius represented by great 
actors throughout, where none were a mere subordinate ! This however 
could be accomplished only by spirits, as in Hofmann's ghostly represen- 
tation of £>on Juan. 

You will perhaps find much that is incongruous in these views ; but 
recollect that great poets work like Nature herself. To every man they 
assume the garb and colour of his own mind, and thence admit of various 
interpretations. They are so rich, that they distribute their gifts among 
a thousand poor, and yet have abundance in reserve. 

Many ofthe stage arrangements were very praiseworthy. For instance, 
the two murderers whom Macbeth hires to murder Banquo, are not, as on 
our stage, ragged ruffians, — by the side of whom the King, in his regal 
ornaments and the immediate vicinity of his Court, exhibits a ridiculous 
contrast, and who could never find access to a palace in such a dress; but 
of decent appearance and behaviour, — villains, but not beggars. 

The old Scottish costume is thoroughly handsome, and is probably more 
true to the times, certainly more picturesque, than with us. The appari- 
tion of Banquo, as well as the whole disposition of the table, was infinitely 
better. In this the Berlin manager made a ludicrous ' bevue.' When the 
King questions the murderers concerning Banquo's death, one of them 
answers, 

" My lord, his throat is cut." 

This was taken so literally, that a most disgusting pasteboard figure 
appears at table with the throat cut from ear to ear. The ascent and de- 
scent of this monster is so near akin to a puppet-show, that, with all the 
good-will in the world to keep one's countenance, one can hardly manage 
it. Here the entrance of the ghost is so cleverly concealed by the bustle 
ofthe guests taking their seats at several tables, that it is not till the King 
prepares to sit down that the dreadful form seated in his place, is suddenly 
visible to him and to the audience. Two bloody wounds deface his pale 
countenance (of course it is the actor himself who played Banquo), without 
rendering it ludicrous by nearly severing the head from the body ; and 
when he looks up fixedly at the King from the festive tables, surrounded 
by the busy tumult of the guests, then nods to him, and slowly sinks into 
the earth, the illusion is as perfect as the effect is fearful and thrilling. 

But, to be just, I must mention one ridiculous thing that occurred here. 
After the murder ofthe King, when there is a knocking at the door, Lady 
Macbeth says to her husband — 

" Hark, more knocking ! 
Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, 
And show us to be watchers." 

Now ' nightgown' does indeed mean dressing-gown ; but yet I could 
scarcely believe my eyes, when Macready entered in a fashionable flower- 
ed chintz dressing-gown, (perhaps the one he usually wears,) loosely 
thrown over his steel armour, which was seen glittering at every move- 
ment of his body, and in this curious costume drew his sword to kill the 
chamberlains who were sleeping near the King. 



222 LETTEKS ON ENGLAND, 

I did not observe that this struck any body ; indeed the interest was 
generally so slight, the noise and mischief so incessant, that it is difficult 
to understand how such distinguished artists can form themselves, with so 
brutal, indifferent, and ignorant an audience as they have almost always 
before them. As I told you, the English theatre is not fashionable, and 
is scarcely ever visited by what is called ' good company.' The only ad- 
vantage in this state of things is, that actors are not spoiled by that in- 
dulgence which is so ruinous to them in Germany. 

The Freischiitz was performed the same evening — after Macbeth. 
Weber, like Mozart, must be content to be ' travaille' by Mr. Bishop, with 
his abridgments and additions. It is a positive affliction and misery to 
hear them: and not only the music, but the fable, is robbed of all its 
character. It is not Agatha's lover, but the successful marksman, who 
comes to the wolf's glen and sings Caspar's favourite song. The Devil, 
in long red drapery, dances a regular shawl-dance before he carries off" 
Caspar to hell, which is very pleasingly represented by cascades of fire, 
scarlet ' coulisses,' and heaps of skeletons. 

Here then the comparison with Germany is as much to our advantage 
as it is the contrary in tragedy. I wish, however, the matter were re- 
versed. 

Dec. 2nd. 

I wrote you word lately, that 1 was better ; since that time I have been 
almost constantly unwell. One ought never to boast of anything, as the 
old women say ; for, adds Walter Scott, " it is unlucky to announce things 
which are not yet certain." This indeed I have often experienced. As 
to my health, it is as unintelligible as all the rest of me. 

You doubtless wonder that I remain in London in this thankless season; 
but I have still friends here — besides, I have settled into this quiet life, 
which is only interrupted by the noise and clatter of the little troop of 
' couturieres' in the house; the theatre too has begun to interest me, and 
the serenity of this seclusion refreshes me after the former tumult. It is 
indeed so quiet and solitary, that, like the celebrated prisoner in the 
Bastille, I have formed a ' liaison' with a mouse,— a darling little creature, 
and doubtless an enchanted ' lady :' when 1 am at work, she glides timidly 
out of her hole, looks at me from a distance with her little eyes twinkling 
like stars, becomes tamer every day ; and enticed by bits of cake which I 
regularly deposit six inches from her residence, in the right corner of my 
room. — At this moment she is eating one with great grace — and now 
she frisks about the room quite at her ease. But what do I hear 1 an in- 
cessant loud cry in the street ! Mousey has fled in terror to her corner. 

" What is the matter .'" said I ; " what an infernal noise !" " War is 
proclaimed — a second edition of The Times is cried about the streets." 
"War, with whom V ' I don't know.' This is one branch of trade among 
the poor devils in London : when they can contrive nothing else, they cry 
some ' great news,' and sell an old paper to the curious for sixpence ; you 
seize it in a hurry, you understand nothing clearly, you look at the date, 
and laugh at finding you have been taken in. 

As is always the case when I live alone, I have unfortunately so com- 
pletely turned day into night, that I seldom breakfast before four in the 
afternoon, dine at ten or eleven after the play, and walk or ride in the 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 223 

night. It is generally not only finer but (' mirabile dictu') brighter in the 
night. The clays are so foggy that even if there are lamps and candles 
you can't see them a yard off"; but in the night the gas-lights sparkle like 
diamonds, and the moon shines as bright as in Italy. As I galloped home 
last night through the wide and quiet streets, white and coal-black clouds 
coursed each other swiftly over her face, and afforded a singularly wild 
and enchanting spectacle. The air was serene and mild ; for the late cold 
has been succeeded by almost spring weather. 

Except L and the standing dishes at the clubs, I see few persons 

but Prince P , who is accused here of great haughtiness and brus- 

querie. They likewise whisper that he is a very Blue Beard to his poor 
wife, and that he shut her up for six years in a solitary castle in a wood, 
so that at last, wearied by ill treatment, she was obliged to consent to a 
separation. What say you, good Julia, to this unhappy fate of your best 
friend. 

How strangely, however, do rumours and calumnies sometimes arise! 
How little can we foresee the inconceivable heterogeneous consequences 
of human actions ! What quite unexpected rocks peril our course ! Nay, 
in the moral as in the physical world, we often see tares arise where wheat 
was sown, while beautiful flowers and fragrant herbs spring out of the 
dunghill. 

I have received your long letter, and give you my heartiest thanks for 
it. Do not be displeased that I so seldom answer in detail, but in some 
sort pay off* the sum of the passages, the neglect of which you reproach 
me with. Be assured that not a word is lost upon me. Remember that 
one gives no other answer to the rose for its precious fragrance, than to 
inhale it with delight. To dissect it would not enhance our pleasure. 
' Au reste,' I regret that I have now neither the materials nor the disposi- 
tion to send you such roses in return. The wall is as bare before me as a 
white sheet — no kind of' ombre Chinoise' will appear upon it. 

Woolmers, Dec. Wtli. 

Sir G O , formerly English ambassador to Persia, had invited 

me to his country house, whither I drove this morning. 

I arrived late, in darkness and rain, and was obliged to dress instantly 
to go to a ball at Hatfield, which Lady Salisbury gives on a certain day 
of the week to the neighbourhood, during the whole time of her residence 
in the country. The going there is therefore received as a sort of call, 

and no invitations are sent. Sir G took his whole party, among 

whom was Lord Strangford, the well-known ambassador to Constan- 
tinople. 

You remember that on my return from my northern excursion I saw 
Hatfield ' en passant.' I found the interior as imposing and respectable, 
from its air of antiquity, as the exterior. You enter a hall hung with ban- 
ners and armour ; then climb a singular staircase, with carved figures of 
apes, dogs, monks, &c, and reach a long and rather narrow gallery, in 
which the dancing was going on. The walls are of old oak ' boiserie,' 
with curious old-fashioned silver chandeliers fixed to them. At one end 
of this gallery is a library, and at the other a splendid room with deep 
metal ornaments depending from the panels of the ceiling, and an enor- 
mously high chimney-piece surmounted by a statue of King James. The 
' local' was very beautiful, but the ball dull enough, and the company ra- 



224 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ther too rural. At two o'clock all was over, and I very glad ; for, weary 
and ' ennuye,' I longed for rest. 

The next morning I delighted myself with a review of the various Per- 
sian curiosities which decorated the rooms. I was particularly struck by 
a splendid manuscript, with miniatures, which excelled all the illuminations 
of the middle ages in Europe, and were often more correct in drawing. 
The subject of the book is the history of Tamerlane's family, and is said 
to have cost two thousand pounds in Persia. It is a present from the Shah. 
Doors inlaid with precious metals ; sofas and carpets of curious velvet, em- 
broidered with gold and silver ; above all, a golden dish splendidly enamelled, 
and many finely-worked ' bijoux,' show that if the Persians are behind us 
in many things, they surpass us in some. 

The weather has cleared a little, and enticed me to a solitary walk. 
Noble trees, a little river, and a grove, under whose thick shade a remark- 
ably copious spring gushes forth as if from the centre of the earth, are the 
chief beauties of the park. When I returned, it was two o'clock, the hour 
of luncheon ; after which Sir Gore showed me his Arabian horses, and 
some of them were quickly saddled for a ride. The groom had little else 
to do than to jump off and on his horse to open the gates which interrupted 
our course every minute. This is the case in most English parks, and 
still more in fields, which makes riding, except on the high roads, some- 
what troublesome. In the afternoon we had music. The daughter of the 

house and Mrs. F ' distinguished themselves as admirable pianistes. 

The hearers were, however, perfectly unconstrained ; they went and came, 
talked or listened, just as they felt inclined. 

When the ladies had retired to dress, Sir Gore and Lord Strangford 
told us many anecdotes of the East — a theme of which I never tire. Both 
these gentlemen are great partisans of the Turks, and Lord Strangford 
spoke of the Sultan as a very enlightened man. He was probably, he said, 
the first ambassador from any Christian power who had had several pri- 
vate conferences with the Grand Signior. At these a singular etiquette 
was observed : the Sultan received him in the garden of the Seraglio, in 
the dress of an officer of his body-guard, and in that character always ad- 
dressed Lord Strangford with the greatest deference in the third person ; 
Lord Strangford did not venture to let it appear that he recognized him. 
He declared that the Sultan was better informed about Russia than a great 
many European politicians, and knew perfectly well what he was under- 
taking.* 

After dinner, at which we had some Oriental dishes, and I drank 
genuine Schiraz for the first time in my life, (no very pleasant wine, by 
the by, for it tastes of the goat-skins,) we had music again, and ' des petits 
jeux.' As these latter were not remarkably successful, the whole party 
went to bed in good time. 

December \2tli. 

I have bought a coal-black horse, a thing as wild as a roe, of my host's 
Arab breed ; and to give him a longer trial, we rode over to pay a visit to 
Lady Cowper, who lives in the neighbourhood. The park and house of 
Pansanger are well worth seeing, especially the picture-gallery, which 
contains two of Raphaels early Madonnas; and a singularly fine portrait 
of Marshal Turenne on horseback, by Rembrandt. Lady Cowper received 

* Judging from the results, he must have seen cause to alter his opinion. — Editor. 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 225 

us in her boudoir, which led immediately into a beautiful garden, even now 
gay with flowers, on the other side of which are green-houses, and a dairy 
in the form of a temple. 

Pansanger is celebrated for the largest oak in England. It is nineteen 
feet and a half in circumference six feet from the ground, and is at the 
same time very straight and lofty, though its branches reach to a great 
extent on all sides. We have larger oaks than this in Germany. 

To reconnoitre the country still more fully, we afterwards made a second 
visit to Hatfield, which I viewed more accurately. 

The whole house, including kitchen and wash-house, is heated by one 
steam-engine. The Dowager Marchioness, the most active woman in 
England of her age, did the honours herself, and led us about into every 
hole and corner. The chapel contains some admirable old painted glass, 
— buried in Cromwell's time, to which it is indebted for its escape when 
the frantic iconoclasts destroyed all the church windows. In one of the 
rooms was a fine portrait of Charles the Twelfth, — that 'Don Quixote en 
grand,' who, but for Pultawa, would perhaps have become a second Alex- 
ander. In the present stables (formerly the house,) Elizabeth lived a 
captive during the reign of her sister Mary. The Queen ordered a very 
lofty pointed chimney, surmounted with an iron rod, to be built on a gable 
opposite to her sister's window, and caused it to be insinuated to her that 
this rod was destined to receive her head. So the Marchioness told us. 
The chimney is still standing, and is thickly overgrown with ivy; but 
Elizabeth, to feast on the delightful contrast in after years, when she 
could contemplate the threatening pinnacle with more agreeable feelings, 
built the new palace close to it. The house is poor in works of art, and 
the park rich only in large avenues of oaks and in rocks ; otherwise dreary, 
and without water, except a nasty green standing pool near the house. 

December \2>ih. 

In my host's house is a singular picture gallery, — a Persian one, which 
contains some very curious things. The portraits of the present Shah, and 
of his son Abbas, are the most interesting. The yellow dress of the former, 
covered with precious stones of every kind, and his enormous black beard, 
form a very characteristic picture of this Son of the Sky and of the Sun. 
His son, however excels him in beauty of feature ; but he is almost too 
simply dressed, and the pointed sheepskin cap is not becoming. The late 
Persian ambassador to England completes the trio. He was a very hand- 
some man, and fell into European manners and customs with such ease, 
that the English speak of him as a perfect Lovelace. On his return home 
he proved himself nowise ' discret,' but compromised several English 
ladies of rank in a shameful manner. 

Some large dressed dolls gave a faithful idea of the fair sex in Persia, 
with long hair painted red or blue, arched and painted eyebrows, large 
languishing eyes of fire, pretty gauze pantaloons, and gold rings round the 
ankles. 

Lady O told us many amusing details of the Harem, which I re- 
serve till we meet, that I may not exhaust all my resources. 

Many things in Persia seem to be very agreeable, many the very re- 
verse ; among them the scorpions and insects. 

These things we are free from in our temperate climates. Let us all 

29 



2'JG LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

therefore be contented in them ; a wish which I cordially form for you and 
me. 

Your L . 



LETTER XXI. 

London, Dec. 16, 1827. 
Dear Julia, 

After writing some verses in the W ■album, in which Arabian 

steeds, Timour's magnficence, Cecil, Elizabeth, and the fair beauties of 
Teheran, met in agreeable confusion, I took leave of my kind hosts, and 

returned to London. The same evening L took me to a singular ex- 

hibiton. 

In a suburb, a good German mile from my lodging, we entered a sort of 
barn ; dirty, with no other ceiling than the rough roof, through which the 
moon peeped here and there. In the middle was a boarded place, about 
twelve feet square, surrounded by a strong wooden breastwork : round this 
was a gallery filled with the lowest vulgar and with perilous-looking faces 
of both sexes. A ladder led up to a higher gallery, for the patrician part 
of the spectators, which was let out at three shillings a seat. There was 
a strange contrast between the ' local' and a crystal lustre hanging from 
one of the balks of the roof lighted with thick wax candles : as well as 
between the ' fashionables' and the populace among whom they were scat- 
tered, who — the latter I mean — were continually offering and taking bets 
of from twenty to fifty pounds. The subject of these was a fine terrier, 
the illustrious Billy, who pledged himself to the public to kill a hundred 
rats in ten minutes. As yet the arena was empty, and there was an anxious, 
fearful pause ; while in the lower gallery huge pots of beer circulated from 
mouth to mouth, and tobacco smoke ascended in dense clouds. At length ap- 
peared a strongman, bearing a sack, looking like a sack of potatoes, but in fact 
containing the hundred live rats. These he set at liberty in one moment 
by untying the knot, scattered them about the place, and rapidly made his 
retreat into a corner. At a given signal Billy rushed in, and set about his 
murderous work with incredible fury. As soon as a rat lay lifeless, Billy's 
faithful esquire picked him up and put him in the sack ; among these some 
might be only senseless, or perhaps there might be some old practitioners 
who feigned themselves dead at the first bite. However, be that as it may, 
Billy won in nine minutes and a quarter, according to all the watches ; in 
which time a hundred dead, or apparently dead, rats were replaced in their 
old quarters — the sack. This was the first act. In the second, the 
heroic Billy, (who was greeted with the continual shouts of an enraptured 
audience,) fought with a badger. Each of the combatants had a second, 
who held him by the tail. Only one bite or gripe was allowed ; then they 
were separated, and immediately let loose again. Billy had always the best 
of it, and the poor badger's ears streamed with blood. In this combat, 
too, Billy was bound to seize the badger fast in a certain number of min- 
utes, — I don't recollect how many. This he accomplished in brilliant 
style, but retired at last greatly exhausted. 

The amusements ended with bear-baiting, in which the bear treated some 
dogs extremely ill, and seemed to suffer little himself. It was evident 
through the whole, that the managers were too chary of their animals to 
expose them in earnest ; I therefore, as I said, suspected from the begin- 
ning some hidden talents for representation — even in the rats. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 227 

In a few months, cock fights will be held in the same place. I shall 
send you a description of them. 

Dec. 21 st. 

There are unquestionably three natures in man, — a vegetable one, which 
is content merely to exist : an animal, which destroys ; and an intellectual, 
which creates. Many are satisfied with the first, most lay claim to the 
second, and a few to the third. I must confess, alas ! that my life here 
belongs to Class I., at which I am often discontented enough : ' but I can't 
help it. 

You have heard of the English Roscius. A new little wonder of this 
kind has appeared, and the maturity of his early talent is really astonish- 
ing. Master Burke (so this little fellow is called) acts at the Surrey The- 
atre. Though only ten years old, he played five or six very different 
parts, with a humour, apparent familiarity with the stage, ' aplomb,' volu- 
bility of utterance, accurate memory, and suppleness and power over his 
little person, which are perfectly amazing. What struck me most, how- 
ever, was, that in a little interlude he acted his own natural part, — a boy 
of ten years old, — with such uncommon truth that the genuine ' naivete' 
of childhood he represented, could be nothing but the inspiration of genius, 
— it is impossible it could be the result of reflection in such a child. He 
began with the part of an Italian music-master, in which he displayed ex- 
traordinary mastery of the violin, and that not only in acquired dexterity, 
but in the good taste of his playing, and a fulness and beauty of tone sel- 
dom equalled. You perceived in his whole performance that he was born a 
musician. Next followed a learned pedant ; then a rough captain of a 
ship ; and so on ; — every part admirably filled, and the by play, in which 
so many fail, peculiarly easy, clever, and appropriate. His last character 
was Napoleon, — the only one in which he failed ; and this failure was 
exactly the thing that put the crown to my admiration. It is characteris- 
tic of true genius, that in the meagre, absurd, and foolish, it appears foolish 
too ; and this part was the quintessence of bad taste and stupidity. It is 
the same in life. Turn Lessing into a courtier for instance, or Napoleon 

into R Lieutenant, and you will see how miserably each will fill his 

part. 

Generally speaking, the important thing is that every man should be in 
his right place. If he is, some excellence will scarcely ever fail to be de- 
veloped in him. Thus, for instance, my genius consists in a fancy, so to 
say, practically applicable ; I have nothing to do but to wind it up like a 
watch, not only to find myself immediately at home in every actual situa- 
tion, but employing it as a stimulus, to throw myself headlong down any 
conceivable precipice. If I get hurt in the fall, I can use it again as a 
restorative, by the unexpected discovery of some wonderful piece of luck 
or other. Now is this the consequence of an accidental physical organi- 
zation, or of an acquired power, — acquired perhaps through a hundred 
preceding generations '( Had this spiritual individual whom I call myself, 
any previous existence connected with another form? and does it endure 
independent, or does it lose itself again in the universal Whole, after the 
bursting of that bubble which the eternal fermentation of the universe 
throws up ? 

Is — as many will have it — the history of the world (or what passes in 



228 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

time), as well as of nature (or what passes in space,) predetermined 
through its whole course, according to the immutable laws of a guiding 
will ? and does it end like a drama in the victory of good over evil ? — or 
does the free power of the spirit fashion its own future, uncertain in all its 
incidents, and only subject to the conditions necessary to its existence ? — 
' That is the question !' Meantime, thus much appears to me clear ; — that, 
by the adoption of the former hypothesis, — turn it which way we will, — 
we are all, more or less, mere finely-constructed puppets: it is only ac- 
cording to the second, that we remain free spirits. I will not deny that 
there is in me an unconquerable, instinctive feeling, like the deepest con- 
sciousness of self, which impels me to the latter belief. This may possi- 
bly be an inspiration of the devil ! Yet he does not lead me so far astray, 
as that I do not, with profound humility and gratitude, ascribe this, our 
mysterious being, to that great incomprehensible Creator, the object of 
my highest and deepest love. But forasmuch as our origin is god-like, 
we must live on, independently, in God. Hear what Angelius Silesius, the 
pious Catholic, says on this subject. 

" Soil ich mein letztes End, und ersten Anfang finden, 
So muss ich mich in Gott und Gott in Mir ergrunden ; 
Und werden das, war er, ich muss ein Schein im Schein, 
Ich muss ein Wert im Wort, ein Gott im Gotte seyn.* 

For this very reason is the doctrine intolerable to me, that man was 
formerly in a more exalted and perfect state than now ; but has gradually 
degenerated, and must labour up again, through sin and misery, till he 
reach his pristine perfection. How much more accordant with all the 
laws of nature, — how much more consistent with the character of an eter- 
nal, most high, all-pervading, all-ruling Love and Justice, is it, to imagine 
that the human race (which I regard as one) advances, from a beginning 
necessarily imperfect, onward and onward towards perfection, by its own 
energy ; although indeed the germ of that energy be implanted by the love 
of the Most Highest ! The golden age of mankind, says the Duke de St. 
Simon, very justly, is not behind, but before us. Our age might be called 
(rather for the will than the power) the mystic age. True mysticism is 
indeed rare ; but it must be confessed that it is a most skilful and profita- 
ble invention of the worldly-wise, to throw a cloak of titular mysticism 
over absurdity itself. Behind this curtain, unhappily, lurk many things, 
- — even that original sin which our modern mystics dwell upon so much. 

Some years ago I was in a very intelligent party, though small in num- 
ber, — consisting only of a lady and two gentlemen. An argument arose 
concerning original sin. The lady and I declared ourselves against the 
doctrine, — the two gentlemen, for it, though perhaps, more for the sake 
of letting off some intellectual fireworks than from conviction. " Yes," 
said our antagonists at length, " the doctrine of original sin is doubtless 
true : like the new French Charter, it was the impulse towards knowledge 
forcing its way. With the gratification of this impulse came evil into the 
world ; which, however, was also necessary to our purification, — to our 
own merit, the only thing truly meritorious." " On this interpretation," 

* I make no attempt to translate this, because the mere words would convey no idea to 
English readers ; and I have no inclination to write, nor probably they to read, a commenta- 
ry — Transl, 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 229 I 

replied I, turning to my ally, " we may be content to admit it ; for this is 
only our own meaning in other words, — a schooling — the necessary transi- 
tion from bad to better, by the help of our own experience and acquired 
wisdom." " Certainly," added the lady ; " only then you ought not to 
call it hereditary sin."* " ' Gnadige Frau,' " answered one of our antag- 
onists, " we will not quarrel about the name ; if you like it better, we will 
call it hereditary nobility for the future." 

After all these profound and subtle reflections, I made the discovery to- 
day that the most frivolous people in the world do actually reflect on their 
own minds and characters. An Austrian of rank who has been here some 
time, did me the favour to give me the following counsels of practical phi- 
losophy, which I must record literally for the sake of their originality. 

" I hold nothing to be more silly," said he, " than to annoy oneself 
about the future. Look ye, — when I came here it was just summer, and 
the season was over. Now another man would have been annoyed at hav- 
ing arrived just at such a bad time ; but I thought it would pass over, and 
— just so — you see we 're got to November. In the mean time Esterhazy 
took me into the country, where I enjoyed myself amazingly ; and now 
there is one more month bad, and then 'twill be full again: the balls and 
the routs will begin, — and what can I wish better? Should not 1 have been 
a perfect fool, now, to distress myself without a cause ? Am I not right ? 

We must live in the world just like a H , and never think too much of 

the future."f 

I admit, indeed, that this practical gentleman and I are of very different 
natures ; and doubtless many a philosopher by profession must regard my 
lucubrations with about as much pity as I do the Austrian's. And yet the 
result is, alas ! the same with all : the only uncertainty is, which is the 
majority. Probably they who think themselves the cleverest. 

Dec. 28th. 

I have received the unpleasant intelligence that the vessel on board 
which I sent you all the seeds and flowers I had bought, has been wreck- 
ed off Heligoland, and but few of the hands saved. Friend L has also 

lost a great part of his effects. This is the only vessel that has been lost 
in those seas this year, and has doubtless the folly of sailing on a Friday 
to thank for it. You laugh ; but that day has a peculiar quality, and 1 too 
have a dread of it ; for in the inexplicable embodied picture of the days of 
the week, which my fancy has involuntarily painted, that is the only one 

*_The Germans do not say original sin, but hereditary sin {Erbsunde). — Erbadel (here- 
ditary nobility) being formed exactly in tho same manner, there is a sort of jeu de mots, 
which the words in use here will not represent. — Transl. 

t For the curious in Austrian philosophy and philology, I subjoin the original of the 
above, which loses, unhappily, its zest in plain English, as it would in good German. — 
Transl. 

" Nix is halt diimmer," sagte er, " als sich um de Zukunft grame ! Schaun's, als i hier- 
her kam, war's grade Sommer, und die Season schon vorbei. Nu hatt' en Andrcr sich 
gegramt, grad in so schlechter Zeit herkommen zu seyn ; aber i dacht, 's wird sich schon 
hinziehen, und richtig, 's hat sich bis zum November hingezogen ! Unterdessen hat niich 
der Esterhazy ufs Land genemmen, wo i mich gar herrlich amilsirt hab, und nu is noch a 
Monat schlecht, dann wird's wicder full, die Ballc und die Routs gehn an, und i kann's nie 
mehr besser wunschen ! War' i nu nich a rechter Narr gewescn, mi zu grame ohne Notli ? 

hab i ni recht ? Man muss in dcr Welt grad wie ne H leben und Dimmer zuviel an die 

Zukunft denken." 



230 LETTEKS ON ENGLAND, 

coal-black. Perhaps you'd like to know, now I am upon the subject, the 
colours of the others. It is a mystical sort of secret. Well then ; Sunday 
is yellow, Monday blue, Tuesday brown, Wednesday and Saturday brick- 
red, Thursday ash-gray. All these day -persons have also an extraordi- 
nary and appropriate spiritual body, — that is, transparent, without any 
determinate form or size. 

But to return to Friday. — The American Secretary of Legation lately 
told me what follows. 

" The superstition that Friday is an unlucky day," said he, " is firmly 
rooted in the minds of our seamen to this hour. An enlightened merchant 
in Connecticut conceived the wish, a few years ago, to do his utmost to 
weaken an impression which has often very inconvenient results. He 
therefore had a new ship laid on the stocks on a Friday : on a Friday she 
was launched ; he named her Friday ; and by his orders she sailed on her 
first voyage on a Friday. Unhappily for the effect of his well-meant 
experiment, nothing was ever heard of the vessel or crew from that day 
to this. 

Yesterday I received your letter. 

That your jewel, as you affectionately call him, should be not only over- 
looked by many in the world, but with great satisfaction trodden under- 
foot, arises naturally enough from this, — that he is polished only on some 
few sides ; and if one of these does not happen to strike the eye of the 
passer-by, he is ' comme de raison,' regarded as a mere common pebble ; 
and, if it happens that one of his sharp points gives pain, is trodden down 
as much as possible. He is valued only by here and there a connoisseur, 
and by the possessor, — who overvalues him. 

Your description of the English family in B made me laugh; the 

originals for such portraits are common enough in the world of London. 
The ' tournure' of the ladies, with few exceptions, is indeed as awkward 

as what you have seen in B ; but long enjoyed and boundless wealth, 

old historic names, and stately invincible reserve, give to the aristocratical 
society of England something imposing — especially to a North-German 
nobleman, who is so small a personage. Do not take to heart the little 
disaster you tell me of. What are these but insignificant clouds, so long 
as the sun of the mind shines clear in our inward heaven ? You should seek 

more amusement. Go to W , to H , to L . We ought not to 

visit people only when we stand in need of them : if we do, they cannot be- 
lieve that we love and value them, but only that we use them ; — and yet could 
these three but see our hearts, they would learn to know and to love us better, 
than by words or visits. As to the park, I'm afraid you have murdered 
venerable age in cold blood, like a cruel tyrant as you are. So then, limes 
that had seen three centuries fell unwilling martyrs to a clear view. 
That is certainly in the spirit of the age. Henceforward, however, I give 
you my instructions only to plant ; plant as much as you like, but remove 
nothing that is there. By-and-by I shall come myself and sever the tares 
from the wheat. 

Dec. 31**. 

Don Miguel of Portugal is arrived, and I was presented to him this morn- 
ing. No body was present but the ' corps diplomatique' and a few 
foreigners. The young Prince is not ill-looking, and indeed resembles 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 231 

Napoleon ; but his manner was rather embarrassed. He wore seven stars, 
and seven great orders over his coat. His complexion is like the olive of 
his fatherland, and the expression of his countenance rather melancholy 
than otherwise. 

Jan. 1st, 1828. 

My best wishes and a hearty kiss at the beginning of a new year. 
Perhaps this is the good year which we have been so long expecting, like 
the Jews their Messias, in vain. I ushered it in at least very cheerfully. 

We spent yesterday at Sir L M 's, who had invited five or 

six very pretty girls, and at midnight we drank a toast to the new year. 

L and I took occasion to introduce the German mode of saluting 

the ladies, to which, after the prescribed quantity of resistance, they con- 
sented. 

To-day I ate part of an Hanoverian roe (there are none in England) 
at Count Minister's country-house. Somebody, by way of Christmas 
present, fired a blunderbuss into the large window of his sitting-room at 
the very moment the Countess was distributing her Christmas gifts to her 
children.* The shot had pierced the looking-glasses like pasteboard, in 
a hundred little holes, without breaking one of them. Fortunately the 
Christmas presents were placed so far from the window that the shot did 
not reach the spot. Nobody can guess who was the perpetrator of this 
horrid act. 

Don Miguel's arrival makes London alive. To-night there was a soiree 
at the Duke of Clarence's, and to-morrow there will be a great ball at 

Lady K 's. The Prince seems to be a universal favourite ; and 

now that he is more at home here, has something very calm and gentle- 
manlike in his ' tournure ;' though it strikes me that in the back-ground, 
behind his great affability, lurks more than one ' arriere pensee.' Portu- 
guese etiquette is so rigorous, that our good Marquis P is obliged 

to kneel down every morning when he first sees the Prince. 

Jan. 3rd. 

I pass over yesterday's fete at Prince E 's to tell you about this 

evening's pantomime, which Don Miguel honoured with his presence. He 
was in a more awkward predicament than the late Elector of Hessen 
Cassel at Berlin, when, at the opening chorus of" Long life to the Amazon 
Queen," he got up and returned thanks. 

The people here, to whom Don Miguel had been represented as a fero- 
cious tyrant, and who saw the formidable monster appear in the shape of 
a pretty young fellow, have passed from aversion to fondness, and receive 
the Prince everywhere with enthusiasm. So it happened to-day in the 
theatre : Don Miguel immediately rose with his Portuguese and English 
suite, and returned thanks most courteously. Shortly after the curtain 
drew up, and now arose a fresh violent clapping at the beautiful scenery. 
Again Don Miguel rose and bowed his thanks : surprised and somewhat 
perplexed, the audience, however, overlooked the mistake, and greeted 
him with fresh cheers. But now appeared the favourite buffoon, in the 

* ' Ihren Kindern den heiligen Christ bescheertc.' The presents which it is the uni- 
versal custom in Germany to make to children on a Christmas eve, are given in the 
name of the infant; — the Christkindchen so dear to all German children. — Transl. 



232 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

person of a great ourang outang, with all the suppleness of Mazurier. 
Louder than ever resounded the enthusiastic applause ; and again Don 
Miguel arose and bowed his thanks. This time, however, the compliment 
was only answered by a hearty laugh ; and one of his English attendants, 

Lord M — — C , without ceremony seized the Infant by the arm and 

motioned to him to resume his seat. No doubt, however, Don Miguel and 
the favourite actor will long remain involuntarily associated in the public 
mind. 

Jan. 6th. 

We float in a sea of fetes. Yesterday the beautiful Marchioness gave 

her's ; to-day was the admired Princess L 's, which lasted till six 

o'clock. People are busied from morning till night in amusing the Prince. 
It is agreeable enough to be this privileged sort of person, whom the highest 
and the lowest, the wisest and the silliest, are all doing their utmost to 
please. 

In the midst of this ' trouble' I received another letter from you through 

L , and rejoiced in the hundred-thousandth assurance of your love, an 

assurance of which I shall certainly not be tired before the millionth, and 
shall then exclaim, ' L'appetit vient en mangeant !" Just as little tired, 
it seems, are people here with these fetes. While the dark clouds are 
gathering heavier and heavier around their horizon, our diplomates dance 
and dine, and meet the threatening storm with jests and laughter ; and the 
great and the elevated are mingled with the vulgar and the common place, 
as in Shakespeare's faithful mirrors of life. 

My own spirits are favourably excited by all this, and my mind is in a 
healthy and vigorous state. My masculine soul (for I have a feminine 
one of my own, besides yours, which belongs to me) is just now ' du jour ;' 
and when that is the case, I always feel more free and independent, and 
less sensitive to external influences. This state of mind is quite the right 
one for a residence here, for Englishmen are like their flints, — cold, angu- 
lar, and furnished with cutting edges ; but the steel succeeds in striking 
live sparks out of them, thus producing light by a friendly antagonism. 

Generally speaking, I am too indolent, or rather, too little excited by 
them, to be either willing or able to act as steel to any of the individuals 
who surround me ; but I have, at least, opposed to their pride still greater 
pride, and thus softened some and repulsed others. Both were just what 
I wished ; for the craniologist said of me very truly, that I was endowed 
with a strong tendency to creativeness ; and such minds can only love those 
which act with the same elective affinities as themselves ; or those which, 
in a subordinate station, are useful instruments on which to play the melo- 
dies of their own composition. All others are either opposite to, or re- 
mote from them. 

Jan. 11th. 

The last party given in honour of Don Miguel took place to-night at the 
Dutch Ambassador's, to which little incident one might hang all sorts of 
interesting historical reminiscences. Both Portugal and Holland, though 
so small in territorial extent, were once great powers. The one took the 
road of freedom, the other that of slavery, and yet both are become equally 
insignificant ; nor does their internal prosperity and happiness seem very 
greatly to differ. But I will leave these considerations, and substitute for 



IRELAND AND FRANCE- 233 

them a few words in praise of the amiable Ambassadress, whose French 
vivacity has not yet. given place to the melancholy, ponderous, follies of 
English fashion. Her house, too, is one of the kw which one may visit 
in an evening in the Continental fashion, uninvited, and be sure to find 

conversation. When Madame de F was living in Tournay before her 

marriage, my beloved ' chef,' the old Grand Duke of W , lived in her 

parents' house for soms time during the war of deliverance,* and used 
jestingly to call the charming daughter his favourite aide-de-camp. As I 
had filled that post, I had to plead a sort of comradeship, an honour I am 
the less disposed to forego my claim to, as her husband is a very agreeable 
man, equally distinguished for the goodness of his heart and the soundness 
of his head. 

I ate a German dinner to-day at Count Miinster's, who from time to time 
regales us with a wild Hanoverian. To-day it was a noble boar, with that 
royal sauce invented by George the Fourth, of which it is written in the 
Almanac des Gourmands, ' qu'avec une telle sauce on mangerait son pere.' 
Over and above this delicacy, we were treated with a good anecdote by 
Sir Walter Scott. He said he one day met an Irish beggar in the street, 
who asked him for six-pence ; Sir Walter could not find one, and at last 
gave him a shilling, saying, with a laugh, "But mind now, you owe me 
six-pence." " Och, sure enough !" said the beggar, "and God grant you 
may live till I pay you." 

Before I went to bed I read over your last letter again. You have en- 
tered completely into my view of the character of Macbeth, and the few 
words you say about it and about the performance of our actors are mas- 
terly. It is strange, but true, that acting is every where degenerated. 
Surely this lies in the selfish, mechanical, unpoetical spirit of our times. 

Equally true is your remark on the high society of B ; that the 

wit, and even the learning, which display themselves so ostentatiously there 
have nothing of that good-humoured attaching character which is necessary 
to give to both the true social charm. The warm heart's pulse is warning 
in that arid soil ; — the people can't help it : — and when they hunt after 
Fancy, she always appears to them, as she did to Hofmann, in the form of 
a horrible lay-figure, or of a spectre. Your friend, who does not fare 
much better, was also, unhappily, born in the sand : but I think the me- 
tallic exhalations which issued from the shafts, the flaming breath of the 
gnomes from beneath, the dark solitude of the pine-forests above, and the 
whisper of the Dryads from, amid their thick branches, surrounded his 
cradle, and shed over the poor child some foreign and beneficent influences. 

The ' parforce' members of the new Parforce huntf made me laugh 
heartily. They are the best contrast to the volunteers of the Landwehr. 
I am myself a sincere advocate of the latter, because I love our King from 
my heart ; and to serve him is not only a duty, but a real enjoyment, in 
my estimation. When I return, therefore, I shall very willingly suffer 
'une douce violence,' and accompany the ' parforce' hunt, were it only 
from respect and attachment to "the elegant and amiable Prince who is the 

* Bcfreiungskrieg. The war against Napoleon is commonly known by that name in 
Germany. — Transl,. 

t A parforce jagd is, in one word, a hunt ; for jagd, like chasse, includes shooting and 
other field-sports ; but, as will be seen, I could not leave out the parforce without destroying 
the sentence. — Transl. 

30 



234 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

leader of it. The field horsemanship, almost forgotten among us, will 
thus be revived ; and England daily teaches me, that habit and amuse- 
ments connected with danger and hardship have a very favourable effect 
on the youth of a nation, and consequently on its whole character. 

January 14///. 

I drove into the City this morning with Count B and a son of the 

celebrated Madame Tallien, to see the India House, where there are many 
remarkable curiosities. Among them is Tippoo Saib's dream-book, in 
which he daily wrote his dreams and their interpretation with his own 
hand, and to which he, like Wallenstein, might mainly ascribe his fall. 
His armour, a part of his golden throne, and an odd sort of barrel-organ are. 
also preserved here. The latter is concealed in the belly of a very well re- 
presented metal tiger, of natural colours and size. Under the tiger lies an 
Englishman in scarlet uniform, whom he is tearing to pieces ; and by turn- 
ing the handle, the cries and moans of a man in the agonies of death, ter- 
rifically interspersed with the roaring and growling of the tiger, are 
imitated with great truth. This is a highly characteristic instrument, 
and greatly assists our judgment of that formidable foe of the English, who 
took the stripes of the tiger as his coat of arms, and was wont to say that 
he would rather live one day as a tiger going out to seek his prey, than a 
century as a quiet grazing sheep. 

Daniel's magnificent work on the celebrated temple of Ellora, hewn in 
the solid rock, interested me uncommonly. The age of these majestic re- 
mains is completely unknown. It is highly curious, and in full conformity 
with Merkel's hypothesis, that the most ancient civilization of the earth 
originated with the negro races, that the statue of the deity in the sanc- 
tuary of the oldest temple of Buddha, distinctly exhibits the peculiar fea- 
tures and woolly hair of a negro. A large stone from the ruins of Perse- 
polis, entirely covered with the yet-undeciphered arrow-writing ; large 
Chinese paintings; huge Chinese lanterns; a very large plan of the city 
of Calcutta, and some beautiful Persian illuminated manuscripts, are among 
the greatest curiosities of this collection. We then visited the warehouses, 
where you may buy all sorts of Indian goods uncommonly cheap, pro- 
vided you ship them immediately for the Continent, in which case they 
pay no duty to the Government. Shawls, which with us would cost at 
least a hundred louis d'ors, are here to be bought in abundance for forty. 
The most beautiful I ever saw, and of a fineness and magnificence which 
would make it a most enviable possession in the eyes of our ladies, was 
only a hundred and fifty guineas: but shawls are not much worn in Eng- 
land, and are thought little of; so that nearly all these are sent abroad. 

January \(Sth. 

The new steam-carriage is completed, and goes five miles in half an 
hour on trial in the Regent's park. But there was something to repair 
every moment. I was one of the first of the curious who tried it ; 
but found the smell of oiled iron, which makes steam-boats so unpleasant, 
far more insufferable here. Stranger still is another vehicle to which I 
yesterday entrusted my person. It is nothing less than a carriage drawn 
by a kite, — and what's more, a paper kite very like those which children 
fly. This is the invention of a schoolmaster, who is so skilful in the guid- 



IRELAND AND PRANCE. 235 

ance of his vehicle, that he can get on very fairly with a half wind, but 
with a completely fair one and on good road, he goes an English mile in 
three-quarters of a minute. The sensation is very agreeable, for you 
glide over the little unevennesses of the road, as if carried over them. The 
inventor proposes to traverse the African deserts in this manner, and with 
this view has contrived a place behind, in which a poney stands, like a 
footman, and in case of a calm can be harnessed in ! What is to be done 
for forage, indeed, is not thoroughly clear, but the schoolmaster reckons 
upon regular trade winds in those regions. As a country diversion, the 
invention is, at all events, greatly to be recommended ; and I therefore 
' send you herewith a ' brochure' announcing it, with explanatory plates, 
after which you can commission some amateur among your own school- 
masters to make a similar attempt. 

I devoted the evening to a pantomime, the strange extravagance of 
which was sustained by such admirable scenery and machinery, that you 
could think yourself in fairy-land, without any great effort. Such pretty 
nonsense is delightful. For instance, an immeasurable rushy bog in the 
kingdom of the Frogs, the inhabitants of which are most accuratety repre- 
senred by clever actors ; and a temple of glow-worms, which in wildness 
of fancy, and wonderful brilliancy, surpasses any Chinese firework. 

Brighton, Jan. 23rd. 

Fashion is a great tyrant ; and however clearly I see this, I suffer my- 
self to be ruled by her as others are. She led me hither a few days ago, 

to the agreeable Miss J , the discreet Lady L , the charming 

F , &c. &c. 

I am already wearied again with balls and dinners, and have resumed 
my coquetry with the sea, the only poetical object in this prosaic place. 
I walked just now, after leaving a ' rout' at the further end of the town, for 
half an hour on its shore, amid the thundering and foaming of the coming 
tide. The stars looked down in all their brightness ; eternal repose reign- 
ed above; and wild tumult and ceaselesss agitation below; — heaven and 
earth in their truest emblems. How beautiful, how beneficent, how fearful, 
how perturbing, is this universe ! — this universe, whose beginning and end 
we know not ; whose extent is illimitable ; before whose infinite series, on 
every side, even Fancy sinks to earth, veiling herselfwith reverential awe. 
Ah, my dear Julia ! Love alone finds an exit from this labyrinth. Does 
not Gothe, too, say, 

" Gliicldich allein ist die Seek die liebt !" 

Jan. 2Uh. 

We have had a fine day's hunting here. The weather was remarkably 
clear and sunny, and at least a hundred red coats took the field. Such a 
sight is certainly full of interest ; the many fine horses ; the elegantly 
dressed huntsmen ; fifty or sixty beautiful hounds following Reynard" over 
stock and stone ; the wild mounted troop behind ; the rapid change of 
wood and hill and valley ; the cries and shouts — it is a miniature war. 

The country here is very hilly, and at one time the hounds ran up so 
steep and }ong a hill, that most of the horses were unable to follow them, 
and those that did, panted like the bellows of a smithy. But when we had 
once reached the top, the * coup d'ceiP was glorious ; you looked down 



236 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

upon the whole, from the fox to the last straggler, all in full movement, 
with one glance; and besides that, over a rich valley to the left, which 
extends to London, and to the right over the sea gleaming like a mirror 
beneath the bright sun. 

The first fox we took ; the second reached Malapartus* in safety, and 
thus escaped his pursuers. Almost all these hunts are maintained by 
subscription. The pack here, for instance, consisted of eighty dogs and 
three huntsmen, with their nine horses, costs 1,050/. a year, which is di- 
vided among five-and-twenty subscribers. Any man who has a mind may 
ride with them. Thus it costs each subscriber not more than forty-two 
pounds a year. The shares, however, are by no means equally divided. 
The rich give much, the poor little, according to their means. Some give 
as much as two hundred a year, some not above ten ; and I think this 
scheme would be a very good one to introduce into Germany, especially 
for poor men. The most striking thing, however, in the whole business, 
to German eyes, is the sight of the black-coated parsons, flying over hedge 
and ditch. I am told they often go to the church, ready booted and spurred, 
with the hunting-whip in their hands, throw on the surplice, marry, chris- 
ten, or bury, with all conceivable velocity, jump on their horses at the 
church-door, and off — tally-ho ! They told me of a famous clerical fox- 
hunter, who always carried a tame fox in his pocket, that if they did not 
happen to find one, they might be sure of a run. The animal was so well 
trained that he amused the hounds for a time ; and when he was tired of 
running, took refuge in his inviolable retreat — which was no other than 
the altar of the parish church. There was a hole broken for him in the 
church wall, and a comfortable bed made under the steps. This is right 
English religion. 

Feb. 6th. 

I caught a cold which brought on a violent nervous fever. This has 
confined me to my bed for a fortnight, and weakened me to an extraor- 
dinary degree. It has not been wholly unattended with danger ; but my 
physician assures me that is quite past ; therefore do not be alarmed. 
Strange that, in a complaint so exhausting, one should be so indifferent to 
the thought of death ! It appears to us only like rest and slumber ; and I 
fervently wish myself such a slow and gradual approach of my dissolution 
from the body, whenever my time comes. As one that delights in ob- 
serving, I would fain, so to say, see and feel myself die, as far as that is 
possible ; that is, watch my own sensations and thoughts with full posses- 
sion of my faculties, and thus taste existence up to the very last moment. 
A sudden death appears to me something vulgar, — animal ; a slow one 
alone, with perfect consciousness of its approach, refined, noble, — human. 
I hope moreover to die very tranquilly ; for although I have never attained 
to sanctity of life, I have held fast to the Loving and the Good, and have 
loved mankind, though not perhaps many individual men. Thus, though 
not yet ripe for heaven, I wish extremely, according to my doctrine of 
metempsychosis, to become once more an inhabitant of this beloved earth. 
The planet is beautiful and interesting enough to like to rove about in it 
in ever-renewed human shape. But if it be ordered otherwise, I am con- 

* This refers to the ancient fable of Reinecke Fuchs. — Transl,. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 237 

tent. From God and his universe we cannot be cutoff"; and it is not prob- 
able that we shall become more foolish or more wicked ; but rather, wiser 
and better. 

The sting of death to me would be the thought of your sorrow ; and yet 
perhaps, without the certainty of your love 1 could not die so happy and 
resigned : — it is so sweet a feeling in death, that we leave some one behind 
who will cherish our memory with tenderness, and in and with whom we 
shall live, so long as his eyes remain open to the light. Is this selfishness? 

As we are talking of dying, I must mention a melancholy incident. 
Do you remember a Scottish chieftain, of whom I told you during my last 
visit to Brighton .' — a somewhat fantastic, but powerful and original High- 
lander. In the full pride of manly strength he has ceased to live. He 
was on board a steamboat with his two daughters, and shortly before land- 
ing received such a blow on the head from one of the yards, that he fell 
into a fit of delirium on the spot, sprang into the sea, and swam to shore, 
where he soon after expired. This end has a certain kindred tragic char- 
acter with the history of an ancestor he told me of with such pride, to 
which he traced the origin of his arms — a bloody hand on a field azure. 
— This is the tradition : 

Two brothers who were engaged in an expedition against some Scottish 
island had entered into an agreement, that he who should first touch the 
land with flesh and blood (a Scotch expression) should remain undisputed 
lord of it. Approaching the shore with all the force with which they 
could ply their oars, they came to a part where the projecting rocks barr- 
ed all nearer approach ; and both brothers, with their followers, dashed 
into the sea to swim to the island. As the elder saw that the younger was 
getting before him, he drew his short sword, laid his left hand on a point 
of rock, cut it off" with one stroke, took it up by the fingers and threw it 
bleeding, past his brother on the shore : " God is my witness," cried he, 
"that my flesh and blood have first touched this land." And thus was he 
king of the island, which his descendants ruled for centuries with unlimited 
sway. 

Feb. 8th. 

The doctor finds me very patient — Good God ! I have been taught pa- 
tience — and to be just, adversity is an admirable school for the spirit. 
Adversity, however, if we look deep enough, arises only from these faults 
in us, which are corrected by it ; and we may unconditionally affirm, that 
if men began and persevered in an undeviating course of reasonable and 
virtuous conduct, they would scarcely know suffering : — but their pleasures 
must then become so subtle and ethereal, that they would set but little 
value on any thing earthly. No more dinners, — at which to get indiges- 
tions. No more fame, — which they hunt after with such delighted vanity : 
no more of love's sweet and perilous risks : no pomp or show for the sake 
of surpassing others : it would be at last — God forgive me for saying so ! 
— a very humdrum life — a dead calm, under an outward show of perfec- 
tion. The essence of life, on the contrary, is motion and contrast. It 
would therefore be the greatest derangement and annoyance if we were all 
to become perfectly reasonable. But I don't think the danger very pressing. 
— You see my illness has not altered me : I should not have told you 
anything about it, but that this letter must go before I am quite recovered. 



238 LETTERS OX ENGLAND, 

You may, however, read it with perfect tranquillity of mind, and be assur- 
ed that I mean to enjoy everything that a benevolent Creator has bestowed 
upon us, to my very latest breath ; whether halfpence, or guineas ; houses 
of cards, or palaces; soap-bubbles, or rank and dignities, — as time and 
circumstance present them ; — and at last even death itself, and whatever 
here or elsewhere may follow it. The severer virtues just show their 
beautiful roots. Thus, for instance, I really enjoy my present temperance ; 
I feel an ethereal lightness from it, and am more elevated than usual above 
all that is animal. Other egarements are wholly out of the question; and 
all this gives me a foretaste of that purer pleasure to come — old age. For 
in certain things — let us but confess it frankly and freely — the wicked 
Frenchman is half in the right : — ' que c'est le vice qui nous quitte, et bien 
rarement nous qui quittons le vice.' 

Feb. 9th. 

I never had a physician who was so kind — to the apothecary ; — two 
doses a day. I live upon nothing else; but, as I am unhappily ill in ear- 
nest, I take what is sent me with great resignation. I miss terribly such 
a nurse as you are ; and my dry, hard landlady, who has frequently offered 
her services very civilly, would he a poor substitute. Meanwhile 1 read 
a great deal, and am in very good spirits. If I were disposed to give 
myself up to melancholy self-tormentings, I could find negative as well as 
positive grounds for them. Now that I am confined to the house, the 
weather is uniformly most beautiful : but as I have set the hands of my 
spiritual watch in a quite other direction, I am on the contrary, very 
thankful to see the bright sun daily ; — very thankful that, spite of his glory 
and majesty, he disdains not to warm my room from early morning ; to 
greet me all day with friendly beams, which clothe everything in a robe of 
gold ; and in the evening, that he takes the trouble to paint the wildest 
pictures in the clouds that hang over the sea, deep blue, flaming amber, 
or purple, — for me, poor invalid ! who sit wrapt up at a large window : 
and at length, when taking leave, shows himself in such splendour, that 
the remembrance of it long afterwards robs the dusky shades of night of 
that gloomy impression which they are wont to leave on the spirit of the 
solitary and the suffering. And thus has everything two sides. There is 
nothing at which the fool may not fall into despair, or the wise man feel 
satisfaction and enjoyment. 

Feb. 10th. 

A letter from you always causes me the greatest delight, as you know ; 
but how much more in my present state ! Judge, therefore, with what 

delight yours was received to-day. * * 

* # # # ##*# 

# # # * # #■# * 

F is very wrong to refuse what was offered to him. It were madness 

for a shipwrecked man, struggling with the waves and nearly exhausted, 
to disdain a fishing-boat which presented itself to save him, that he might 
wait for a three-decker. It is certainly possible that such an one is 
already coming round that point; and at the moment when the boat has 
borne him away to some meaner destination, may heave in sight with all 
her canvass set. But we are not omniscient ; we must treat the chances 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 239 

which the contatenation of events offers us, according to probability, not to 
possibility. 

My presents please you, then ? Now God bless them ! Little pleasures 
are as good as great ones ; and we ought diligently to study the art of 
creating to ourselves such, far oftener than we do ; there is abundance of 
cheap materials for the purpose : but no superstition must intrude — like 
that which you express about ths scissars. Good Julia, the scissars are 
not yet invented which can cut our love ; — they must be crab-like, and 
with a backward action cut away all memory of the past. Now I must 
scold you for another thing. To what end did I send you all that beautiful 
coloured ' blotting-paper,' if you relapse into the horrid fashion of strewing 
sand on your paper, which is as unknown in England as sanded floors? 
Several ounces of this ingredient in your correspondence flew in my face 
when I opened your letter. Will you, too, throw dust* in my eyes, dear 
Julia? and has Jeremiah brought you a new serious sand-box for the 
purpose from B 1 

I am very industrious, and employ my leisure in putting in order 
several volumes of my life-atlas. The whole day long I arrange, cut, 
write, (for you know there's a commentary to every picture) — in short all 
that a poor sick man can do to pass time. Behold, with your mind's eye, 
twenty folio volumes of the classic work standing in our library, and our- 
selves, grown old and bowed, sitting before them, rather doting, but still 
triumphing in the glorious old times. Young shot-up things are laughing 
by stealth behind our backs : flying out and in ; and when one of them asks 
" What are the old people about V another answers, " O ! they are sitting 
poring over their picture-bible, and have no eyes nor ears for anything 
else." Now this is what I should like to live to see, and it always seems 
to me as if it must come to this. What lies between, however — that 
indeed God only knows. 

Bellows now cut a great figure in the newspapers. An ass, poisoned by 
way of experiment, was restored to life by continual blowing into his 
lungs ; and the Houses of Parliament are going to be furnished with pure 
air during the whole sessions by means of a great pair of bellows. As an 
infallible remedy against suffocation, nothing more is necessary than to 
hold the patient by the nose, and blow common atmospheric air into his 
lungs, with the bellows out of the chimney corner. There will therefore 
be a greater number ofpuffed-up people in England now than ever. 

Feb. 12th. 

My illness has hindered me from going to Scotland, for which I had 
prepared every thing, and received many invitations ; and now the ex- 
pected arrival of W and the beginning of the season will keep me in 

London. To-day for the first time my doctor let me go out : and I took 
my way to Stranmore Park, which is at no great distance, that I might 
enjoy fresh air and the pleasure of a romantic walk. I was, however, not 
permitted to enter the garden, though I sent in my card. We are more 
liberal, indeed, — but this stern repulsiveness has its advantages : — it gives 
more value both to the thing itself, and to the permission to see it, when 

* The Germans say, " Sard in die Augen slreuen" to scatter sand (not dust) in the ej'es. 
Here, as in so many other cases, difference of idiom destroys a ' jcu de mots.' — Transl. 



240 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

you do obtain it. ' A propos,' this reminds me of your new steward. It 
is desirable for us to kee'p him ; nevertheless I beg you to behave to him 
a little as the lady of Stranmore did to me. Don't be too ' empressee' in 
your kindness; that, if he deserves it, you may leave yourself the power 
of increasing it. Be kind, but with dignity; always shading off the su- 
perior station which you must necessarily maintain with regard to him. 
Don't try to attach him by indulgence or over-civil behaviour, but by con- 
fidence, which does him honour ; and also by substantial advantages, 
which in the end never fail to have their effect upon people, let them say, 
or even think, as they will. But you must address yourself no less to his 
ambition : keep it always awake by discreet concessions, by gratitude for 
proofs of zeal, and no less by gentle reproof whenever you think it neces- 
sary ; that he may see you have a judgment. As an honourable man, he 
will then not fail to conduct our affairs with the same interest as if they 
were his own. Lastly, take care not to fatigue him, in his province of 
supervision, with details: don't attempt to exercise control over him in 
every trifle, and keep vigilant watch to support his authority over those 
under him, no less than your own over himself; — in those cases only where 
you see reason to fear that something important is amiss, do not delay an 
instant to require a full explanation. In very weighty cases that admit 
of delay, you will of course consult me. Herewith does Polonius conclude 
his exhortations. 

Feb. 15th. 

The short flight was premature, for it did not agree with me. The 
charming weather, too, is become horrible. A snow-storm now flogs the 
sea under my windows, so that it foams and roars again for rage, and its 
billows dash over the high pier up to the houses. 

In the midst of this thunder I yesterday began to write my memoirs, 
and finished eight sheets, which I send you herewith. 

I have also taken advantage of this time to go through Lesage's histori- 
cal Atlas again ; and 1 cannot say that during my whole illness I ever felt 
a moment's ennui. Indeed the perfect repose and passionless calm of such 
a period refreshes my soul. My body will soon be restored also; and then, 
as soon as the sky clears a little, I think to return once more to the haunts 

of men. A ,* to whom I sent your letter, desires her best love to you. 

From her great intimacy with the future Queen, she is treated quite like 
a ' Princesse du Sang.' She begins to feel her own importance a little ; 
her former shy, timid ' tournure' is altered much to her advantage, and 
she has learnt to assume a certain air without losing her affability. The 
sun of fortune and favour changes a human being, as the sun of heaven 
does a plant which faded in darkness, and now raises its drooping head in 
his bright beams, and penetrated by the genial warmth opens fragrant 
blossoms to the light. We, dear Julia, still lie in the cellar, like hyacinth 
roots ; but the gardener can place us in a more favourable soil and brighter 
sun in the spring — if it please him. 

Feb. 20th. 

1 have been out — and behind every thing is become strange wherever 

* Adelaide, Princess Carolath, born Countess von Pappenheim ; daughter of the Noble 
Lady to whom these letters are addressed, by the Bavarian General-of-di vision Count von 
Pappenheim, and mentioned in a former part of the work under the name of Emily. — 
Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 241 

I went. My acquaintances were almost all gone, and in the houses and 
promenades new faces met me. The bare country alone I found in its 
former state, except that the green fields were manured — with oyster- 
shells. Miss , a not very young, but rich and ' agreeable' lady, told 

me that the papers here had spoken of me as lying at the point of death, 
while the London ' Morning Post' introduced me as dancing at Almack's, 

which certainly looks rather spectral. This good-natured Miss is 

still full of acknowledgments for a ticket I once got her for Almack's, and 
played and sang her thanks to me rather more than the weak state of my 
nerves could bear. I took my leave, but soon fell into the hands of two 
other Philomels who are also belated here. 

As soon as my strength is quite restored I shall return to London, and 
can now, with a good conscience, and without fear of causing you anxiety, 
despatch this long letter. 

The short meaning of many words is ever the same — the hearty love 
of Your L . 



LETTER XXII. 

London, Feb. 28th, 1828. 

I must go back to mention to you an acquaintance I made at Brighton, 
which in one point of view is interesting. You have no doubt heard that 
an ancestor of the Thelluson family made a will, according to which his 
property was to accumulate for a hundred and fifty years, interest upon 
interest, and the then existing young Thelluson to come into possession of 
the whole. In twenty years this term will expire ; and I saw the present 
Mr. Thelluson, a man of forty, who has very little ; and his son, a pretty 
boy of eight, who is probably destined in his twenty-eighth year to be 
master of twelve millions sterling, — ninety four millions of our money. 
An act of Parliament has prohibited all such wills for the future ; but could 
not invalidate this, though great efforts were made to do so. So enormous 
a fortune certainly invests a private man with a very unnatural degree of 
power. However, I could not help heartily wishing good luck to the little 
fellow, with his splendid hopes. There is really something grand in hav- 
ing such enormous wealth ; for it cannot be denied that money is the re- 
presentative of most things in the world. What marvellous objects might 
be attained by such a fortune well applied! 

Next to this young Croesus ' in spe,' I was interested by a man of very 

original character, Colonel C , who was here some days. Lady 

M directed my attention to him, and told me as follows : " When I 

was young, the elegant middle-aged man you see there, was one of the 
most admired beaux of the metropolis. After he had run through all his 
fortune, with the exception of a few thousand pounds, chance one day led 
him before a map of America, and the thought suddenly struck him that 
he would go there and turn backwoodsman. He examined the map, and 
fixed on a solitary spot on Lake Erie, sold all his effects the same week, 
married his servant to a pretty young girl, embarked with them, and 
arrived in safety at the spot he had chosen in the primeval woods, where 
he lived for a few days by hunting, and slept under the leafy canopy : with 

31 



242 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the help of some backwoodsmen he soon built a log-house, which he still 
inhabits. He acquired a considerable influence over the settlers scattered 
around him, which he employed in encouraging them to their joint labours, 
and rendered himself peculiarly agreeable to them by playing the part of 
cook, and preparing palatable food, instead of the half-raw meat they used 
to eat. He sees an increasing and attached population spring up around 
him, is proprietor of a little principality in extent, calculates his income 
at ten thousand a year, and comes regularly every tenth year, for ' one 
season,' to England, where he lives, at formerly, with all the ' aisance' of 
a fashionable man of the world, and then returns to his woods. 

My first visit in the metropolis was to Countess M , who, ' malgre 

ses quarantes ans,' has added another child to her dozen during my ab- 
sence. I dined there, and admired a beautiful present of plate from the 
King, the workmanship of which is finer here than anywhere, so that the 
cost of the labour is often ten times that of the metal. At dinner the 
Count told a curious anecdote; characteristic of the administration of jus- 
tice in this country. 

" A man whom I know," said he, " had his pocket-handkerchief stolen 
in the street. He seized the thief, and, being the stronger, held him fast, 
though not without receiving several violent blows ; and at length gave 
him into the charge of a police officer who came up. The transaction was 
perfectly clear, and passed in the presence of many witnesses ; and the 
delinquent, if prosecuted, would have been transported. His wife went 
to the gentleman, begged for mercy on her knees : the thief himself, who 
was not an uneducated man, wrote the most moving letters, — and who will 
wonder that he at length found pity 1 On the appointed clay the prosecu- 
tor staid away, and the criminal was accordingly acquitted. 

" The gentleman paid dearly enough for his ill-timed compassion. A 
fortnight after this transaction, he was prosecuted, by the very man who 
picked his pocket, for an assault, which was proved on the testimony of 
several witnesses. The defendant replied, tha>t it was certainly true that 
he had seized the man, but that he had done so only because he had caught 
him in the act of picking his pocket. But as the criminal had already 
been acquitted of this, and no man can be twice tried for the same offence, 
no notice was taken of the justification. In short, it cost the too generous 
sufferer about a hundred pounds, which he had to pay partly to the man 
who robbed him, and partly to the Court." The whole company thought 
this sort of justice monstrous ; but an old Englishman defended it with 
great warmth and pertinacity. "I think," exclaimed he earnestly, " that 
the incident just related, exactly goes to illustrate the wisdom of our laws 
in the most striking manner. All laws and judicial authorities are insti- 
tuted solely for the purpose of preventing crime. This is also the sole 
end of punishment. The receiver of stolen goods is therefore, in the eye 
of the law, nearly as guilty as the thief; and he who knowingly tries to 
rescue a criminal from the grasp of the law, is almost as pernicious to the 
community as the criminal himself. That man who, perhaps, began his 
career of crime with the stealing of this pocket-handkerchief, and there- 
fore ought to have been withdrawn from society for penitence and amend- 
ment, now, emboldened by success, is probably planning a larger theft, — 
perhaps a murder. Who ought to bear the blame? This very gentle- 
man, — who has been deservedly punished for his illegal pity. He who 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 243 

thrusts his hand uncalled for and inconsiderately between the wheels of a 
useful machine, must not wonder if he breaks his fingers." 

The English are, it must be confessed, most skilful sophists, whenever 
their usages are called in question. The most distinguished man among 
them, however, Brougham, lately made a speech of six hours long, which 
treated entirely of the defects and abuses of English law. The most stu- 
pendous of these seemed to be, that there is now in ' the Court of Chan- 
cery' the enormous sum of fifty millions sterling, which has no actual 
determined owner. A suit in this Court is become proverbial for some- 
thing interminable ; and there is a very diverting caricature, which bears 
the inscription, ' A Chancery Suit.' At first a young man handsomely 
dressed, and in high blooming health, fills the hat of a starved skeleton of 
a lawyer with guineas, by way of retaining fee. A long, long procession 
of men and things follows; and at last we see the young man as a ragged 
broken-down beggar, asking alms of the lawyer, now grown fat as a 
tun, which the latter scornfully refuses. ' Helas, c'est encore tout comme 
chez nous,' only in more corpulent proportions. 

On many things, however, which appear to foreigners most exasperat- 
ing, they ought, to take care not to form too hasty a judgment, since abuses 
and even obvious original defects are often only the inevitable shadows of 
a far greater light ; — as, for instance, bribery at elections, — perhaps even 
the ' rotten boroughs,' and the acknowledged dependence of a considerable 
portion of the members of parliament on Government, by means of ' pa- 
tronage,' and so forth. It seems to be quite a question whether any Mi- 
nistry could stand without these means, apparently so pernicious. It is, 
however, something gained, that a Government should not have that con- 
ceded in theory (as it is in despotic states) which nevertheless, perhaps, 
they cannot quite dispense with in practice ; — as the preacher's life never 
quite comes up to his doctrine. We must not forget that an approach to 
perfection is all that can.be expected from human things; and therefore 
reformers ought carefully to keep in mind 'que le mieux est Fennemi du 
bien.' Nevertheless, I think I see many indications that England is ad- 
vancing towards a reform ; and indeed, that it is, from various causes, 
quite inevitable. Whether it will end advantageously for her, or not, is 
another question. Perhaps the very necessity is a proof that she has out- 
lived her highest greatness, and is already declining. 

In the evening I visited the Adelphi Theatre, where a juggler exhibited 
his feats of art in a very new manner, under the title of ' Conversazioni.' 
He stood surrounded by various tables and machines on the stage, and be- 
gan with a history of his journey in the Diligence : into this he introduced 
various characters and anecdotes, sang songs, and interspersed his narra- 
tive with tricks, or optical deceptions, or phantasmagoria, as appropriate 
incidents, — a good idea enough, which increases the interest of such exhi- 
bitions. His dexterity and certainty as a juggler were moreover as re- 
markable as his good dramatic acting and his memory. He concluded 
with playing on the musical glasses ; not only in the harmonica style, but 
waltzes and the like ; and even introduced long shakes, which he executed 
admirably. 

March 9th. 
The season already asserts its prerogative. The streets swarm with 



244 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

elegant equipages ; the shops spread forth fresh treasures ; all the houses 
are full, and all prices raised doubly and trebly. Mr. Peel the Minister 
gave a brilliant soiree this evening to the Duchess of Clarence. His 
house is decorated with many fine pictures, among which is Rubens' fa- 
mous ' Chapeau de paille.' Mr. Peel gave fifteen thousend reichsthalers 
for this picture — a half-length. 

I went with Prince E yesterday to see the small private collec- 
tion of a clergyman (Mr. Carr,) which consists of not above thirty pictures, 
has cost him twenty thousand pounds, and is quite worth it. There are 
as many master-pieces as pictures, — the only true sort of collection for a 
private man, who does not use his gallery for instruction in the art, but 
for enjoyment. 

Here is a Garoffolo, of such unearthly transparency and brightness, of 
so holy and deep a poetry, that you think you behold a picture of Eden, 
not of this earth ; and a large Claude, also of the highest order of beauty, 
in which the smallness of the means employed are as wonderful as the ex- 
traordinary effects produced. In an adjoining room were some beautiful 
landscapes by Domenichino and Annibal Caracci. The richness of com- 
position, the deepness and freshness of invention, were adorned with such 
a fantastic charm and such variety of details, that I could have lost my- 
self all day long in these strange regions, with their broad watery mirrors; 
their islands, groves and pretty huts ; their deep blue mountains, and fo- 
rests of spectral darkness. In a third room you reach the crown of the 
whole collection, a picture by Leonardo da Vinci, in which he has repre- 
sented, in the three persons of the Saviour, Peter and John, the Ideal of 
youth, manhood, and old age; all of a beauty, truth, and perfection, which 
leaves nothing to desire. It is the only head of Christ, of all I ever saw, 
which fully satisfies me ; it is as strikingly expressive of grandeur and 
force of mind, as of purity and meekness ; while at the same time it unites 
this speaking expression with perfect ideal beauty. The grouping of the 
whole, too, is so satisfactory to the eye ; the colouring so brilliant and so 
fresh; the execution, down to the smallest details so masterly, — that one 
feels a fulness of delight such as few works of art bestow.* But nothing 
remains of the exquisite pleasure of contemplating such a work, save a 
cold dissection of it by words. I will therefore quit the subject ; only 1 
wish to make connoisseurs better acquainted with this choice collection. 

There is an exhibition of battles by Generat Lejeune, which he first 
fought, and then painted. They show great talent and power. In the 
battle of the Moskwa, the theatrical Murat and his suite form the princi- 
pal group ; he, streaming with feathers, ringlets, fringe, and embroidery, 
— standing, with his self-satisfied air, under a fire of musketry ; he is in 
the act of giving the order to the French and Saxon cuirassiers for that 
murderous attack, and the storming of a battery of forty guns, which cost 

so many their lives, and among them my beloved friend H The 

King is just about to put himself at the head of them. Who could then 
have predicted that he would so soon be ignominiously beaten by a mob, 
and shot as a criminal 1 

Deeply affecting, though too horrible for art, is the figure of an Austrian 

* A learned antiquarian once told nie that the old painters generally painted on a ground 
of chalk, and used preparations for fixing their colours, whence they are so permanent, fresh, 
and brilliant. Strange that people don't give themselves the trouble to try this experiment ! 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 245 

staff-officer at the battle of Marengo, who has been shot through the belly, 
so that the bowels are lying on the ground. The unfortunate wretch, to 
escape from his insufferable torture, has entreated a French 'gens d'arme' 
to lend him his pistol, which he is putting to his mouth with a look of des- 
pair, while the owner of the weapon turns away shuddering. 

In another picture is the onslaught of a party of Spanish guerillas on a 
French detachment. You see a most romantic pass in the mountains of 
Catalonia, remarkable for four stone oxen, the erection of which is as- 
cribed to Hannibal. At their feet lie two or three skeletons of French 
cuirassiers, still in full armour. Not a soul escaped this slaughter except 
General Lejeune himself, and this only by a half-miracle ; — three of the 
guns aimed at him missed, which the Empecinado superstitiously took for 
a warning, and commanded the men not to fire at him again. You see 
General Lejeune stripped naked ; one murderer has caught him by the 
hair, another is treading on his body, and the arms of tho others are 
pointed against him ; while his servants and a soldier, pierced through and 
through by pikes and swords, breathe their last at his side. 

The battle of the Nile, — where the Mamelukes, in half-frantic flight, 
spur their noble Arabian horses from a high hill down into the river, 
whence but a kw reach the opposite bank, — has also a very romantic 
effect. 

March ISth. 

I forgot to tell you that about a fortnight ago the elegant little Bruns- 
wick Theatre, scarcely finished, fell in during the rehearsal of anew piece, 
and destroyed a great many lives. I went to look at the ruins yesterday ; 
the carcasses of two cart-horses, which had been crushed in the street 
were still lying under the rubbish. It was a fearful sight. Only one 
single box remained standing ; in this, Farren the actor saved himself, by 
bis coolness in not stirring from the spot. — Thence he saw the whole hor- 
rible catastrophe, — only too real and unexpected a tragedy. 

In the whirl of the season it's all forgotten. Yet this tumultuous life 
furnishes far less stuff for thought than might be imagined ; and what it 
does furnish, is soon forgotten in the confusion. 

A family dinner at the great R 's, who has been likened to the Sul- 
tan, because the one is the Ruler of all Believers, and the other, the 
Believer in all Rulers, occurred as a variety. This man has really some- 
thing very original about him. He was peculiarly merry to-day ; ordered 
the servant to bring his new Austrian consular uniform, which" his friend 

M ch," as he said, had sent him from Vienna ; showed it to us, and 

even suffered himself to be persuaded To try it on before the looking-glass, 
and to walk about in it. And, as virtuosi when they have once begun 
never know when to stop, he now sent for other magnificent Court dresses, 
and changed his toilette several times, as if he had been on the stage : — 
and that with such child-like good-nature and naivete, that I could only 
compare such a golden hero with Henry the Fourth, found by the foreign 
ambassadors acting as horse to his little son. 

It was, ' au reste,' rather droll to see how this otherwise serious trades- 
man-like man tried to assume the various bendings and bowings, and the 
light and gracious air, of a courtier ; and, not in the least disconcerted by 
our laughing, assured us, with as much confidence as joviality, that N 



246 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

M R , if he liked, could act any part ; and, with the help of five 

or six glasses of wine extra, could make as good a figure at Court as the 
best of them. 

An acquaintance I made a few days ago had a very different sort of 
interest for me, — I mean that of General Mina. You have seen several 
portraits of him, all of which represent him with hnge mustachios and wild 
features, like a ferocious captain of brigands. Think then of my astonish- 
ment at seeing, in the hero of Spain, a mild, simple, and singularly modest 
man, without the slightest trace of what is called a military ' tournure ;' 
on the contrary, like a country schoolmaster or farmer, with an open good 
natured countenance, and blushing at every compliment paid him, like a 
girl. When he grew animated with conversation, I, however, remarked a 
change in his features and a lightning of his dark eye, which betrayed the 
spirit within. 

He is in very good preservation, and has scarcely the air of a man of 
forty, though his short hair is quite white ; but this by no means makes 
him look old, — it only gives him the appearance of being powdered. He 
said, in the course of conversation, that he never had that luxuriant bush 
of hair to boast, which people are so fond of bestowing upon him, and that 
he had often laughed at the caricatures which he saw of himself in the 
shop-windows. 

There were two other distinguished Spaniards present : Arguelles, — 
Minister under the Constitutional Government, and the most celebrated 
popular orator of Spain — a man of most prepossessing appearance and 
polished manners; and General Valdez, Commandant of Cadiz during the 
last siege. It was he who took the beloved Ferdinand on board his ship, 
(he being then senior Admiral of the Fleet) to the French camp. Though 
as he said, before and during the voyage the King overwhelmed him with 
caresses, repeatedly expressed his thanks for the treatment he had receiv- 
ed in Cadiz, and made great promises for the future, the fate of poor Val- 
dez was already sealed. " The moment the King quitted my ship," 
continued Valdez, " his behaviour suddenly changed ; and as soon as he 
felt himself secure, he casta piercing look of triumph and of long sup- 
pressed rage at me. J knew this look, and instantly took my resolution. 
Without waiting to deliberate or take leave, I sprang on board my ship, 
and set sail instantly for Cadiz. I thus probably escaped death : but my 
exile here, in poverty and wretchedness, — far from my unhappy country, 
— is, for a man of sixty, accustomed to wealth and greatness, perhaps a 
greater evil." 

I must now take you again to the theatre, and in the company, too, of 

the celebrated Lord L , an old acquaintance of mine, who, after his 

varied and busy career, now preserves himself by daily washing with 
vinegar ; whereas he used formerly to pickle others in a sauce as sour 
and pungent as that of the former ' Confiseur' of the Elegante Zeitung, 
both in writing and by word of mouth. We talked of past times; and as 
we reached the door of Drury Lane, he recited some wild but beautiful 
verses of Moore's.f * * * 

■f The verses alluded to are these : 

" Oh what were Love made for, if 'tis not the same 
Through joy and through torment, through glory and shame ? 
I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart ; 
I but know that I love thee — whatever thou art." 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 247 



They are nearly as follows, in my usual halting verse — translations of the 

moment.! * ***** 

**** * * # * 

No bad motto for Desdemona, which awaited us ; though truly the Moor's 
was a fearful return for such devoted love. 

Before I go to the performance itself, let me make a few general remarks. 

It is a constantly contested point in Germany, whether Shakspeare 
should be given in a literal translation, in a free one, or in a still freer 
paraphrase. I decide for the second ; premising that the liberty should 
be restricted to this, — unfettered scope in the spirit of the German tongue, 
■ — even though a play of wit or words should occasionally be lost by the 
means. But to alter in any considerable degree the course of the play ; 
to omit scenes ; to give to Shakspeare words and ideas perfectly foreign 
to him, — can only deform and mutilate him, even when done by the greatest 
poet. People say Shakspeare is better to read than to see, and cannot be 
performed in a literal translation without carrying us back to the infancy 
of the scenic art; since, as they maintain, theatrical representations in 
Shakspeare'stime were no more than stories in dialogue, with some attempt 
at costume. I will not go into the question of the accuracy of this asser- 
tion ; but thus much I know, — that the representation of Romeo and Juliet, 
Macbeth, Hamlet, and Othello, on the English stage, — all which pieces 
are given with slight omissions, and in which things generally supposed 
the most shocking to taste and probability, even the obligato king's trum- 
peters, are not wanting, — nevertheless leave a feeling of such full and 
untroubled satisfaction on my mind, as reading or hearing read (even by 
Tieck, the best reader I know of,) never had the power to produce in the 
most distant degree ; — nay, still more, I confess that it is only since I have 
see them here, that I have been sensible of all Shakspeare's gigantic pro- 
portions in their full amplitude. It is true, that to produce this, a degree 
of concert on the part of all the actors and an excellence in those who 
support the chief chara<?ters are necessary, which are wholly wanting in 
Germany ; — for Macbeths in Berlin, (as Clauren would say,) and Macbeths 
in London, are as different sort of people as Shaskpeare himself and his 
excellent commentator Franz Horn. The first actors here, such as Kean, 
Kemble, Young, &c., are, as I have elsewhere remarked, men of great 
cultivation, who have seen the best society, and devoted their lives to the 
earnest study of their great national poet. They seldom act any other 
characters than his, and do not mix up a tragic hero with one of Iffland's 
Geheimenr tithe (privy councillors,) nor Talbot with Herr von Langsalm, 
nor appear to-day in Othello, and to-morrow in Wollmarkt. 

It strikes one as very singular, that in appearance, and to a great extent 
in reality, the public before whom these distinguished artists have to pre- 
sent thomselves is so rude, ignorant and unmannerly. Yet perhaps this 
very thing may produce a good effect on them. As the truly virtuous love 
virtue, so must an English actor love his art, — for its own sake alone, — 
and trouble himself little about his reception : in the end, he is thus most 
sure to obtain universal applause. And indeed I must confess that, spite 

. t The translation seems to be inferior to the others by the Author and hardly worth co- 
pying.— 



248 LETTEKS ON ENGLAND, 

of all this roughness, there is a portion of English audiences which has at 
bottom sounder taste and sense than the feeble, hyper-refined people of our 
German metropolitan towns ; nay, even among the vulgar crowd there is 
an invisible church of the initiated, whose existence never suffers the sa- 
cred fire in the breast of the actors to be wholly extinguished ; it is not 
ver}' busy in public criticism, but has a mighty effect in society. 

Many Germans don't like to be told that other nations excel us in any 
thing : and truly I perceive the fact with great regret : but that must not 
prevent my speaking out my conviction, that, as we have no dramatic 
poet of Shakspeare's calibre, so we possess no actor capable of making his 
characters live before our eyes in their full significancy. It was not 
always so, as it is asserted; and I myself have retained impressions 
received in my earliest youth from Fleck and Unzelmann, which have 
never been renewed in Germany. Schroder and Eckhof seem to have 
stood yet higher; and I remember with singular pleasure the enthusiastic 
descriptions given me of them by old Archenholz, who had also seen Gar- 
rick. He thought Schroder at least Garrick's equal. 

That in order to form anything like a correct judgment of foreign 
actors, we must first in some degree throw ourselves in thought into their 
nationality ;* must accustom ourselves to many of their manners and 
usages, which, like many turns of their language, always affect us as strange, 
however well we. may understand them, — will be admitted by every think- 
ing man. At first, these causes always more or less distract the attention ; 
and I never saw more than one indvidual who, (if I may use the expres- 
sion,) had a perfectly cosmopolitan organization, — the perhaps never- 
equalled, certainly never-surpassed, Miss O'Neil. In her it was only the 
pure abstract human mind and soul that spoke ; — nation, time and external 
appearance, vanished from the thoughts in an ecstacy which carried all 
before it. 

But back to the present. 

We saw Othello, then ; in which the combined acting of the three greatest 
dramatic artists of England afforded me a high intellectual treat, and ha9 
elicited this somewhat long 'expectoration;' but caused me to feel most 
painfully the want of the above-mentioned heroine. Had she been there, 
I should have witnessed the highest point of all theatrical representation. 
Kean, Young, and Kemble, compose the ruling triumvirate of the English 
stage. The first has without doubt the most genius; the second is bril- 
liant and sustained in his acting; the third, though less distinguished in 
the highest tragedy, uniformly dignified and intelligent. This representa- 
tion of Othello was the first time of their playing together. It was indeed 
a rare enjoyment ! Othello and Shylock are Kean's greatest parts. It is 
amazing with what profound knowledge of the human heart he not only 
portrays the passion of jealousy, — first slumbering, then gradually awaking, 
and ending in madness; but with what wondrous accuracy he catches the 
Southern nature of the Moor, — the peculiar characteristics of the race, and 
never for a moment loses sight of them. In the midst of the high and noble 
bearing of the hero, something animal occasionally peeps forth that makes 

* " Vns in Hirer Nationalitdt Mneinzudenken" (to think ourselves forth into their nation- 
ality) ; — a compound word which may give some faint idea of the advantages a writer in the. 
German language must ever possess over his translator. — Transl. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 249 

us shudder, while on the other hand it gives force to his agonizing tor- 
ment, and places it bodily before our eyes. The simplicity of his acting 
at first, the absence of all bragging about his past achievements, and his in- 
tense love for the woman of his choice, win the hearts of the spectators as 
they have won that of Desdemona : the ugly Moor is forgotten in the 
complete, heroic man; till, amid the torments of lacerating jealousy, that 
hidden fierce nature slowly reveals itself to our eyes ; and at length we 
think we see before us a raging tiger, rather than a being of like nature 
with ourselves. I was here confirmed anew in my persuasion, that a great 
poet, still more than a moderate one, stands in need of a great actor to 
make him perfectly understood and estimated. In Berlin, for instance, 
the strangling scene was not only ludicrous, but really indecent. Here, 
the blood froze in one's veins; and even the boisterous and turbulent Eng- 
lish public was for a time speechless, motionless — as if struck by lightning. 
Nay, I must acknowledge that sometimes during the tragedy, Othello's 
long torment, which the fiend-like Iago with such devilish calmness doles 
out to him drop by drop, was so painful, and the terror of what I knew 
was to follow grew upon me so involuntarily, that I turned away my face 
as from a scene too horrible to contemplate. Young's Iago is a master- 
piece, and his acting first made this character thoroughly clear to me. It 
is, perhaps — and here I must recant, at least in this one case, an assertion 
I made before — Iago is perhaps, contrary to Shakspeare's usual custom, 
not a character quite founded in nature, but rather a brilliant conception 
of the poet : — but then with what astonishing consistency is it carried 
through ! He is an incarnate fiend ; a being nourished with gall and bit- 
terness, capable neither of love nor joy ; who regards evil as his element ; 
the philosophizing on himself, the contemplating and full and clear setting 
forth of his own atrocities, is his only enjoyment. The tie which binds 
him to human kind is feeble ; it is only revenge for the suspected injury 
done him by the Moor : and even this seems but a sort of pretext which 
he makes to himself with the last expiring breath of moral sensibility, and 
his genuine delight in torture and distress ever the real and leading mo- 
tive. And yet even this monster is not utterly revolting. His intellectual 
superiority, his courage, his consistency, and, at the last, his firmness in 
extremity, never suffer the consummate villain to sink into abject, vulgar 
degradation. Iago is a hero, compared to Kotzebue's models of virtue. 
Completely in this sense Young played the character : his manners are 
gloomy and morose, but noble ; no smile passes over his lips, and his jests 
lose nothing by this dryness : certain of his power, he treats all with calm 
superiority, but with well-defined ' nuances :' to his wife he is simply 
rough and domineering ; to Roderigo, authoritative and humorous ; to 
Cassio, polite and friendly ; to the Moor, reverential and attached, but al- 
ways serious and dignified. Kemble, on his part, played Cassio as admir- 
ably ; and perfectly as Shakspeare describes him; "a man, framed to 
make women false ;" young, gay, gallant, of a noble mein, good-natured 
character, and polished manners. — Desdemona, unhappily, was but mode- 
rately represented ; and yet the touching contrast of her gentle, patient, 
womanly devotedness, with the Moor's burning passion, was not utterly 
lost. 

Kean played Othello in the dress of a Moorish King out of the Bible, — 

32 * 



2-jO LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

in sandals, and a long silk talar, which is manifestly absurd. But 
soon forgets his dress in his glorious acting. 

Your faithful L 



LETTER XXIII. 

London, March 2Ath, 1828. 
Beloved Fkiend, 

Among the most aristocratical parties are to be numbered the concerts 
of one of the most liberal members of the Opposition, — an anomaly often 
to be found here ; where a certain vague general liberalism goes hand-in- 
hand with the narrowest pride and most arrogant conceit of class ; and 
where the haughtiest man in his own house possesses the reputation of the 
most liberal in public life. 

Very amusing parties are also given by a Duchess, whose brevet is so 
new that she is reckoned a plebeian by the exclusives : — such an one took 
place to-day. On the second floor there was an excellent concert, on the 
first a ball, and on the ground-floor constant eating. 

At the dinner which preceded, the servants waited in white kid gloves, 
an imitation of another fashionable Duke. This almost disgusted me, for 
I could not get out of my head the lazaretto, and other disagreeable cuta- 
neous associations. 

More rich in intellectual enjoyment was my yesterday's dinner at the 
Duke of Somerset's, a man of very various accomplishments. At table, a 
celebrated parliamentary orator told some strange things: among others, 
he said that he had lately been a member of a Commission for investigat- 
ing the connexion between the police and the thieves, about which so many 
complaints have been made. It came out, that a Society existed in Lon- 
don, completely organized with ' bureaux,' ' clerks,' dec, which directed 
thefts and coining on a large scale, supported those who were taken, and 
afforded powerful assistance both offensive and defensive, dx. He assert- 
ed, that at the head of this association were not only several people in re- 
spectable stations, and members of Parliament, but even a well-known 
Peer of the realm. The proofs were of a kind that left no room for doubt; 
but to avoid the dreadful scandal, the Ministry had determined to let the 
matter drop. One sees that in free countries things go forward which we 
don't so much as dream of. 

A lover of natural history afterwards read us a lecture on toads, which, 
in their sphere, seemed to me as odd sort of people as the foregoing. 

March 27th. 

I am just come back from the Levee, which was very numerously 
attended. The King was obliged to sit, on account of his gout, but looked 
very well. The Duke of Wellington returned thanks for his elevation to 
the Premiership by falling on both knees, whereas it is usual only to kneel 
on one. His gratitude was probably double, on account of his double 
quality of Prime Minister and former Commander-in-Chief, as the cari- 
catures represent him, — the left half of his body dressed as a courtier, the 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 251 

right as field-marshal, but laughing on both sides of his face. As, with 
the exception of the ' Grande entree,' almost everybody is admitted to 
these levees if they can but appear in the prescribed dress, there cannot 
be better sport for the lovers of caricatures. The unaccustomed dress, 
and no less unwonted splendour of royalty, raise the national awkwardness 
and embarrassment to their highest pitch. Our charming well drilled 
court-ladies would often distrust their own eyes. 

As soon as I had changed my dress, I rode in the most delightml spring 
weather in the still solitary Regent's Park, where hundred of almond-trees 
are in blossom ; and visited the menagerie lately established there, which 
presents a model worthy of imitation. There is nothing over-done, and 
at the same time a neatness, which assuredly can be attained nowhere but 
in England. Here I saw a tiger-cat, a creature which seemed to me a 
perfect model of beauty and elegance among quadrupeds. 

I afterwards went to a grand dinner at the Marquis of Thomond's, an 
Irish peer, at which I met one of the most conspicuous Tories in England, 

the Duke of N — . I must confess he has not much the look of a genius ; 

and the whole party was so stiffly English, that I heartily rejoiced at being 
seated next to Princess P , whose lively good-natured ultra prattle ap- 
peared to me, to-day, as agreeable as if it had been the most intellectual 
conversation in the world. 

I concluded the evening with a ball at the Marquis of Beresford's, in 
honour of the Marchioness de Louly, sister of Don Miguel, who however 
seemed not a little bored. She speaks only Portuguese, and therefore 
could converse with scarcely any body but the host. 

The Marshal himself is a striking soldierlike-looking man, against whom 
party spirit has been very unjustly directed. He is a man of resolute 
character, as well as of attractive manners, such as many Governments, 
beside the Portuguese, might employ to advantage ; strong as a lion, arid 
prudent as a serpent. He considers Don Miguel's claim to the throne of 
Portugal as better founded than that of his brother ; and maintains, that 
in judging of persons and events in other countries, we must resort to a 
totally different standard from that which we employ in our own. He says 
that Don Miguel's education was so neglected, that in his three-and- 
twentieth year he could not write ; that much therefore could not be ex- 
pected from such a prince ; but that he had some brilliant natural 
qualities, and that the newspapers were not to be implicitly believed. This 
latter assertion, at least, I am not inclined to doubt. 

April 7th. 

I thought it a real blessing to-day to dine in the country, quite ' sans 

gene' at H — Lodge, the pretty villa of the Duchess of St. A . In 

front of the house, which stands on the slope of a hill, bloomed a splendid 
star of crocuses and other early flowers, in the midst of the bright green 
turf, surrounding a marble fountain ; while over the tops of the trees the 
giant city lay dimly seen in the valley, like a ' fata montana' of the New 
Jerusalem in a gauze mist. The dinner was, as usual, excellent ; and after 
dinner we had a concert in a beautiful green-house filled with flowers and 
fruits. I sat at table next to a lineal descendant of Charles the Second, a 
relation of the Duke's, — for about half a dozen English Peers spring from 



252 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

mistresses of the merry monarch, and bear the royal arms quartered with 
their own, of which they are not a little proud. 

It is still very cold, but yet leaves and flowers break forth vigorously, — 
a sight that would enrapture me at home, but here gives me a heart sick- 
ness that is often hardly endurable. Nevertheless I do not choose to sit 
down again on the old golden seat of thorns, but will rather seek out a 
smooth and comfortable common stool, on which I may repose in freedom. 

Park, April 9th. 



I came here yesterday, and am with a large party at the house of a 
very ' fashionable' lady. The house is as tastefully and richly adorned as 
possiUe, but too stately and too portentous in its beauty to be truly agree- 
able, at least to me. Besides, there is a certain L here, a patent 

witling, whose every word the extremely good-natured company holds it- 
self bound to admire : people affect great liking for him, from fear of his 
evil tongue. Such intellectual bullies are my mortal abhorrence ; espe- 
cially when, like this, to a repulsive exterior they unite all the gall and 
acrimony of satire, without any of its grace. They appear in human 
society like venomous insects, whom, from some pitiable weakness, we 
assist in feeding on the blood of others, so that they do not suck our own. 

The still life about me speaks more to my heart than the human beings ; 
especially the sweet flowers which are placed in pretty vases and recep- 
tacles of all sorts in all the apartments. Among the pictures, I admired 
a Joseph leading the little Jesus, by Morillo. In the beautiful child lies 
the germ of the future greatness and god-like nature of the Redeemer : 
as yet it slumbers dimly, but is wonderfully expressed in the prophetic 
beaming of the eye. Joseph appears a plain simple man, in the full vigour 
of middle age, betraying dignity of character though not of station : — the 
landscape is wild and original, and cherubs' heads peep sweetly forth out 
of the dark clouds. The picture, the owner told me, cost him two thous- 
and five hundred pounds. 

I was much pleased with a conservatory for palms, built almost entirely 
of glass, — so transparent that it looks like a house of ice. 

The country life here is in some respects too social for my taste. If, 
for instance, you wish to read, you go into the library, where you are 
seldom alone: — if you have letters, to write, you sit at a great common 
writing table just as much in public ; they are then put into a box with 
holes, and taken by a servant to the Post. To do all this in your own 
room is not usual, and therefore surprises and annoys people. Many a 
foreigner would like to breakfast in his own room ; but this he cannot well 
do, unless he pleads illness. With all the freedom and absence of useless 
ceremonies and tedious complimenting, there is yet, for a person accus- 
tomed to our habits, a considerable degree of constraint, which the con- 
tinual necessity of speaking in a foreign tongue renders more oppressive. 

London, April 12th. 

I took my leave of Park this morning just as an April storm was 

clearing off, breathed the spring air with delight, and looked with ecstacy 
at the brilliant green and the bursting buds, — a sight of which I am never 
weary. Spring indemnifies our northern climes for all the discomfort of their 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 253 

winter; for this awakening of young Nature is accompanied with far less 
coquetry on her part in the South. 

I was invited again to dinner at the Duchess of St. A 's country- 
house, where a very agreeable surprise awaited me. I arrived late, and 
was placed between my hostess, and a tall very simple, but benevolent 
looking man of middle age, who spoke broad Scotch, — a dialect anything 
but agreeable ; and would probably have struck me for nothing else, had I 
not soon discovered that I was sitting next to — the Great Unknown. It 
was not long ere many a sally of dry, poignant wit fell from his lips, and 
many an anecdote, told in the most unpretending manner, which, without 
seeming brilliant, was yet striking. His eye, too, glanced, whenever he 
was animated, with such a clear, good-natured lustre, and that with such 
an expression of true-hearted kindness and natural feeling, that it was 
impossible not to conceive a sort of love for him. Towards the end of din- 
ner he and Sir Francis Burdett told ghost-stories, half-terrible, half-hu- 
morous, admirably, one against the other. This at last encouraged me 
to tell your famous key story, which I embelished a little in the ' denoue- 
ment.' It had great success ; and it would be droll enough if you were to 
find it in the next romance of the prolific Scotchman. • 

He afterwards recited a curious old inscription which he had recently 
discovered in the churchyard of Melrose Abbey. It was as follows : 

" The earth goes on the earth, glittering in gold, 
The earth goes to the earth sooner than it would ; 
The earth builds on the earth castles and towers, 
The earth says to the earth — All this is ours." 

When translated, something like this : 

" Erd' geht auf Erde glanzend in Gold, 
Erd' geht zur Erde tri) her denn wollt'; 
Erd' baut auf Erde Schlosser von Stein, 
Erd' sagt zur Erde — Alles ist mein !' 

True enough ; for earth we were, are, and shall be. 

A little concert concluded the evening ; in which the very pretty daugh- 
ter of the great bard, — a healthy-looking Highland beauty, — took part ; 
and Miss Stephens sang nothing but Scotch ballads. It was not till late 
in the night that I reached London and enriched my book of memoranda 
with a sketch of Sir Walter Scott — very like, for which I am indebted to 
the kindness of my hostess. As none of the engravings I have seen re- 
semble him, I shall send you a copy with this letter. 

April 21th. 

The 'trouble' of this day was very monotonous; only a dinner at the 
Spanish ambassador's furnished me with one agreeable recollection. A 
Spanish girl, full of fire and beauty, sang boleros in such a manner that 
they awakened a completely new musical sense in me. If I may judge 
from them, and from a fandango I once saw danced, Spanish society must 
be very different from ours, and far more 'piquante.' 

Yesterday I was invited 'to meet the Dukes of Clarence and Sussex,' 
declined the honour for the sake of meeting Mademoiselle H at our 



254 LETTERS ON ENGLAND,- 

friend B 's. I had not seen her, and great and small are now at her 

feet. 

She is indeed an enchanting- creature, and very dangerous to all who 
are either new in the world, or who have nothing to think of but their own 
pleasure. It is impossible to conceive a more unstudied and yet effective 
inborn coquetry, (if I may use the expression,) so child-like, so engaging, 

* et cependent le (liable n'y perd rien.' 

She seemed to seize my weak side as well as that of every other man, 
immediately, and talked to me, though without the slightest apparent 
design, only of what was likely to be appropriate and agreeable to me. 
The tones of my fatherland, too, fell from her pretty mouth in the stream 
of conversation, like pearls and diamonds, and the loveliest blue eyes light- 
ened upon them like a spring sun behind a thin veil of clouds. 

" To-morrow Kean plays Richard the Third," said she carelessly. 
" The Duke of D has offered me his box ; — -would you like to accom- 
pany me ?" That such an in invitation will supersede all others, follows 
of course. 

April 28th. 

Never did I see or hear less of a play than this evening, and yet I must 
confess never did one appear to me shorter. Spite of the presence of a 

* gouvernante,' and a visit from Mr. Kemble between the acts, there was 
scarcely a pause in our conversation, which so many reminiscences of home 
rendered doubly interesting. 

This agreeable ' excitement,' too, lasted, on my side, during the ball 
which followed at the fashionable Lady Tankerville's ; for I felt less ' en- 
nuye' than usual at these heartless wooden parties. Forgive me if I write 
only these few words, for Helios is leaving his bed, and I must go to mine. 

April 29lli. 

Everything here is in colossal dimensions, even the workshop of my 
tailor, which is like a manufactory. You go to ask about the fate of a 
coat you have ordered ; you find yourself surrounded by hundreds of 
bales of cloth ; and as many workmen ; — a secretary appears with great 
formality ; and politely asks the day on which it was ordered. As 
soon as you have told him, he makes a sign for two folios to be brought, 
in which he pores for a short time. " Sir," is at last the answer, " to- 
morrow at twenty minutes past eleven the ' frac' will be so far advanced 
that you can try it on in the dressing-room." There are several of these 
rooms, decorated with large looking-glasses and ' Psyches,' continually 
occupied by fitters, where the wealthy tailor in person makes a dozen alte- 
rations without ever betraying the least impatience or ill-humour. 

As soon as justice was done to the ' frac,' I continued my walk, and 
came to a butcher's shop ; where not only are the most beautiful garlands, 
pyramids, and other fanciful forms constructed of raw meat, and elegant 
vessels filled with ice give out the most delightful coolness, but a play-bill 
hangs behind every leg of mutton, and the favourite newspapers lie on the 
polished tables. 

A few houses further on, a dealer in sea-monsters competes with him, 
and sits, like King Fish in the fairy tale, between the marble and the foun- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 255 

tain. He would however find it difficult to rival his celebrated colleague 
Crockford, who understands how to catch something better than common 
fish. 

This person is a man of genius, who has raised himself from the estate 
of a poor fishmonger, to that of the scourge, and at the same time the fa- 
vourite, of the rich and fashionable world. He is a gambler, who has won 
millions,* and with them has built a gaming palace on the plan of the 
' salons' at Paris, but with a truly Asiatic splendour almost surpassing that 
of royalty. Everything is in the now revived taste of the time of Louis 
the Fourteenth ; decorated with tasteless excrescences, excess of gildinu-, 
confused mixture of stucco painting, &c, — a turn of fashion very consis- 
tent in a country where the nobility grows more and more like that of the 
time of Louis the Fourteenth. 

Crockford's cook is the celebrated Ude, practically and theoretically the 
best in Europe. The table and attendance are in the highest perfection, 
combined with ' un jeu d'enfer,' at which twenty thousand pounds and more 
has often been lost in one evening, by one man. The company forms a 
club ; admission is very difficult to obtain ; and although games at hazard 
are illegal in England, most of the Ministers are members, and the Duke 
of Wellington, the Premier, one of the managers of this gaming club. 

May 2nd. 

Yesterday, the wedding day of the Duchess of St. A , was celeb/at- 

ed by a very pleasant rural fete at her villa. In the middle of the bowling- 
green was a Maypole decorated with garlands and ribands, and gaily-dress- 
ed peasants in the old English costume danced around it. The company 
wandered about in the house and garden as they liked ; many shot with 
bows and arrows ; others danced under tents, swung, or played all sorts of 
games, or wandered in the shade of thick shrubberies; till at five o'clock 
a few blasts of a trumpet announced a splendid breakfast, at which all the 
delicacies and costly viands that luxury could furnish, were served in the 
greatest profusion. 

Many servants were dressed in fancy dresses as gardeners ; and gar- 
lands of fresh flowers were hung upon all the bushes, which produced an 
indescribably rich effect. The day, too, was so singularly fine that I was 
able, for the first time, to see London quite clear from fog, and only slight- 
ly obscured by smoke. 

As night drew on, the effect of the garlands of flowers was renewed by 
many-coloured lamps, tastefully distributed amid the trees, or half hidden 
among the thick shrubs. It was past midnight when breakfast ended. 

There was a concert, and then a ball, at which the lovely German walt- 
zer outshone all her rivals, — and with the most unpretending air, as if she 
did not perceive one of her conquests. Perhaps there never was a woman 
who had the art of appearing more innocent and childlike ; and certainly 
this captivating sort of coquetry is the greatest charm, though not, per- 
haps, the greatest merit, of women. 

May 8th. 
For a week past two or three concerts have resounded in my ears every 

* Of German money, of course, is meant. — Transl. 



256 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

evening, or, as they here more properly say, every night. They are all on 
a sudden become a perfect rage, from the highest and most exclusive down 
to the herd of ' nobodies.' Mesdames Pasta, Caradori, Sontag, Bram- 
biihi, Messrs. Zuchelli, Pellegrini, and Curioni, sing for ever and ever the 
same airs and duets ; which, however, people seem never tired of hearing. 
They often sing — doubtless tired themselves of the eternal monotony — very 
negligently, but that makes no difference whatever. The ears that hear 
them are seldom very musically organized, and are only awakened by 
' fashion ;' and those who are in the centre of the crowd certainly can often 
hardly distinguish whether the Bassist or the Prima Donna is singing, 
but must fall into extacies like the rest, notwithstanding. For the perform- 
ers, this ' furore' is profitable enough. Sontag, for instance, in every party 
in which she is heard at all, receives forty pounds, sometimes a hundred ; 
and occasionally she attends two or three in an evening. Pasta, whose 
singing is, to my taste, sweeter, grander, more tragic, rivals her ; the 
others, though their merit is considerable, are in a subordinate rank. 

Besides these, Moschelles, Pixis, the two Bohrers, ' enfin' a herd of 
virtuosi, are here, all flocking to English gold, like moths around a candle. 
?vot that they burn themselves ; on the contrary, the women, at least, kin- 
dle fresh flames, right and left, which are sometimes even more profitable 
than their art. 

The concerts at Prince Leopold's are generally the most agreeable, and 
the insufferable squeezing is somewhat avoided in his large rooms. This 
Prince is less popular than he deserves ; for the English can't forgive him 
for being a foreigner. 

May 9lh. 

Riding with M , we accidentally came through a charming country to 

Strawberry Hill, — the house built by Horace Walpole, which he mentions 
so often in his letters, and which has been wholly unaltered and little inha- 
bited since his death. It is the first attempt at modern Gothic in England 
— quite in the ' clinquant' taste of that time ; the stone-work imitated in wood, 
and a great deal more that glitters without being gold. There are, how- 
ever, many real treasures of art and curiosities. Among them is a mag- 
nificent prayer-book set with jewels, filled with drawings by Raphael and 
his pupils; Cardinel Wolsey's hat ; a very expressive portrait of Madame 
du Deffant, Walpole's blind and witty friend ; and a picture of the cele- 
brated Lady Mary Wortley Montague, in a Turkish dress. 

As every thing is to be found in England, 1 met with an Englishman of 
rank, to-day, who has endeavoured to introduce German habits, German 
domestic arrangements, and a German tone of society into his house. This 
is Earl S -, who lived in our fatherland for a long time in rather nar- 
row circumstances, and suddenly came into a very large fortune. The only 
thing in the English taste was the crimson liveries of his people, with 
canary-coloured inexpressibles and stockings ; — all the rest was German ; 
even the hour of dining was an approach to ours. The length of the din- 
ner was in the highest degree wearisome to me ; I sat upon thorns, espe- 
cially as I was expected elsewhere. 

In spite of my ill-humour, however, I could not help laughing at the 
Wienerisch (Vienna dialect) of my Austrian neighbour. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 257 

May \6th. 

I have been spending some days in the country at the Epsom races. 
The scene was very lively; all the roads full of swiftly-rolling equipages; 
and a large green hill in the middle of the plain, around which the races 
are held, so thickly covered with a thousand unharnessed carriages, and a 
motley crowd of horsemen and foot-passengers, that I never saw a more 
picturesque popular festival. — Now set this picture in the frame of a pretty 
cultivated landscape, with a sky full of dark clouds, much rain, and rare 
but hot gleams of sunshine. 

I returned yesterday, that I might not miss a party at the King's to-day, 
to which I was invited — an event here looked upon as an extraordinary 
'bonne fortune.' — You must not associate any idea of Court with it: but 
it is certain that the Ideal of a fashionable house cannot be more completely 
realized. Every comfort and every elegance of a private gentleman is 
united in the most tasteful and substantial manner with royal magnificence; 
and the monarch himself is, as is well known, prouder of nothing than of 
the title of "the first gentleman in England." 

May 30th. 

Though the everlasting whirl leaves little leisure, (and once drawn into 
the vortex it is not easy to extricate one's-self, even though one may find 
no pleasure in it,) I yet find a moment, from time to time, for more quiet 
and more durable enjoyment. 

In one such, I lately visited a most interesting collection of pictures; — 
all portraits of persons eminent in English history. It was. remarkable 
how frequently most of them corresponded in features and expression with 
the picture history has left us of them. The celebrated Lord Burleigh had 
moreover a striking resemblance to the great State Chancellor (Staats 
Kanzler) of Prussia, though he is greatly disguised by his head-dress, which 
is like an old wife's cap. James the First was divertingly true to his cha- 
racter; as was also his ambassador, the eccentric knight who so delight- 
fully declares in his memoirs, that wherever he went, he charmed both men 
and women; and that his nature was like that of no other man, for that 
both he and all descended from him sent forth an atmosphere of the most 
agreeable natural fragrance. 

I then went to another collection, consisting of modern paintings in water- 
colours, in which branch of art the English have certainly attained to a singu- 
lar perfection. One is astonished at the glow and depth of colouring they pro- 
duce. The Scotch landscapes were remarkably fine: there was a Sunset 
in the Highlands which rivalled Claude in truth; and a twilight on Loch 
Lomond, a poem full of romantic beauty. I had still time for a long ride, 
in the course of which, committing myself as usual to the guidance of 
chance, I came upon a most enchanting park, such as only the climate of 
England can produce. The gardens lay, in all their indescribable glow of 
beauty, in a narrow and fertile green valley full of high trees, under which 
three silver springs gushed forth, and flowing away in meandering brooks, 
took their course in all directions amid impervious thickets of blooming 
rhododendrons and azaleas. 

My delight in such scenes is ever saddened by the regret that you cannot 
behold them with me: your fine and accurate taste would draw from them 
a thousand ideas of new and lovelier creations; either by the skilful group- 
ing of colours, or by graceful forms, or by the distribution of light, the ef- 
fect of which may be so greatly enhanced by judicious thinning or massing 
of the foliage. 

33 



258 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

The pleasant remembrance of this morning must diffuse itself over the 

rest of the day, which was filled by a dinner at Lady P 's, distinguished 

for her love of good cheer; two balls at residences of British and foreign 
diplomacy; and a concert at Lord Grosvenor's. This was given, it is true, 
in a gallery of fine pictures; but on such an occasion they hardly give one 
more pleasure than any other hangings. 

June 6th. 

One of the most interesting houses to me is that of a noble Scot, the 

Earl of W , a lineal descendant of Macduff. In his armoury is a 

branch of a tree said to be of Birnam Wood; probably a relic of the same 
quality as most others. Blessed is he who can believe in them! The family 
is most accomplished, and the Scotch mind is more nearly akin to the Ger- 
man than the English is. The amiable daughters taught me a new manner 
of preserving faithful and lasting portraits of feathered favourites: — the 
feathers are pulled off, and pasted on card-board or varnished wood, toge- 
ther with the legs and beak; this produces a bas-relief of great truth, and 
not exposed to destruction. 

Charles the Tenth spent some time in Scotland, at Lord W — — 's and 
left him an old maitre d'hotel, who, drolly enough, is called Bonneau, like 
him of the Pucelle; and is one of that nearly extinct domestic race of 'hom- 
ines de confiance' who are now never seen but on the stage, and hardly 
there. As such, and having been twenty-five years ' en fonction,' he is al- 
lowed occasionally to put in a word, — quite contrary to English manners, 
which do not permit servants to make the slightest approach to their mas- 
ters, except in the way of their service. I have really found few things 
more amusing than this old Frenchman's stories about Court and society; 
his world, in fact, terminated with those times of which we can now scarce- 
ly form an idea. That the singular old man is only a ' a maitre d'hotel' 
detracts nothing from the interest ; for he has seen more of the great world, 
and observed it better, than many of higher rank. 

When I paid my visit to Lady W this morning, she had just re- 
ceived a great cargo of curiosities from one of her sons, who is travelling 
in South America. Among them was a lion-monkey, with a tail and mane 
like those of the king of beasts, on a body not larger than that of a rat. 
Instead of the disagreeable smell of most of his tribe, this little fellow ex- 
hales musk and cinnamon ; and, like the knight I lately mentioned, per- 
fumed the room like a pastile. A very complete collection of serpents, 
and another of butterflies, exhibited colours such as are only painted by 
the rising and setting sun. 

I dined at Lady F 's, where a curious incident occurred. Her hus- 
band was formerly Governor of the Isle of France, where a black-woman 
sold her a fortune-telling book, which, as she asserted, had belonged to the 
Empress Josephine before her departure for France, and in which she had 

read her future greatness and subsequent fall. Lady F produced it 

at tea, and invited the company to interrogate Destiny according to the 
prescribed method. — Now listen to the answers it gave, which are really 
remarkable. Madame de Rothschild was the first: she asked, whether her 
wishes would be fulfilled? She received for answer, " Weary not Fate 
with wishes ; one who has received so much ought to be satisfied." 

Mr. Spring Rice, a distinguished member of Parliament, and one of the 
most zealous champions of Catholic emancipation, (a subject in which 
everybody here takes a strong interest, either for or against,) next asked 
if this Bill would pass the Upper House, in which it was to be finally de- 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 259 

bated on the morrow? — I must interrupt my narrative to tell you that it 
is well known that it will not pass, but it is as universally believed that 
next session the desired object must be attained. " You will have no suc- 
cess this time," was the laconic reply. A young American lady was now 
urged to inquire whether she would soon be married. The answer was, 
' ; Not in this hemisphere." Next came my turn, and I asked whether what 
now so strongly agitated my heart were for my happiness. "Let the in- 
clination drop," replied the magic book, "for you will find it is neither real 
nor permanent." The company who of course had no guess at my real 
meaning in this question, made themselves very merry about the answer I 
had received, and insisted upon my proposing another. I therefore asked, 
" Will Fortune be more favourable to me in more serious projects?" 
"Seek," was the reply, " and you will find; persevere, and you will 
obtain." 

Without seeking, I found this evening something very agreeable ; for I 
was presented by the Duchess of Clarence to her mother, the Duchess of 
Meiningen ; a most amiable woman, of true German character ; whom 
neither years nor rank have been able to rob of her ' naif natural manners, 
— perhaps the surest proof of a pure and lovely mind. This worthy mo- 
ther of an honoured daughter must be a welcome guest to the English, 
who are much attached to their future Queen, and accordingly they pay 
her the greatest attentions. Pity, that high as well as low are generally 
loo deficient in grace of manners, or felicity of address, to be able to act 
the drama of society on such occasions, so as to render the whole a pleas- 
ing or elegant spectacle! a drawing-room and a presentation at Court 
here are as ludicrous as the levee of a Burgermeister of the ancient Free 
Imperial cities of our fatherland ; and all the pride and pomp of aristocracy 
disappears in the childish ' embarras' of these 'ladies,' loaded, — not adorn- 
ed, — with diamonds and fine clothes. In ' neglige,' and when they move 
at ease in their own houses and their accustomed circle, young English- 
women often appear to great advantage : in ' parure' and large parties, 
scarcely ever ; for an uncontrollable timidity, destructive of all grace, so 
paralyses even their intellectual powers, that a rational conversation with 
them would certainly be a most difficult matter to obtain. 

Of all the women of Europe, I therefp*e hold them to be the most agree- 
able and ' comfortable' wives ; and at the same time the most incapable of 
presenting themselves with grace, address, or presence of mind ; and the 
least fitted to embellish society. In this judgment the praise manifestly 
far outweighs the censure. 

June 16th. 
To-day I was present at an interesting breakfast, given by the Pigeon 
Club. This title by no means implies that the members are gentle and 
harmless as doves :* — on the contrary, they are the. wildest young fellows 
in England, and the poor pigeons have nothing to do with the matter but to 
be shot at. The arena was a large grass-plat surrounded by a wall. On 
one side was a row of tents ; in the largest of which a table was spread 
with viands, from one o'clock till six, and furnished with a constant supply 

* Owing to the adoption of the French word pigeon, instead of the English word 
dove, this sentence loses its point. I did not however venture to astonish my readers by 
translating Tauben-club, Dove-club, though that would have done more justice to the 
author's meaning. In Norfolk and Suffolk, where some very pure English is still pre- 
served among the ' vulgar,' dove, or as they call it dow, is still the common appellative 
of the whole genus, — as in the cognate language. — Transl. 



2G0 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

of iced moselle and champagne. About a hundred members and some 
guests were present ; and they shot, ate and drank, by turns. The pigeons 
were placed in a row, eight at a time. Cords are fastened to the 
doors of their houses, which meet at the shooting-stand ; when one is 
pulled it opens the door, and the pigeon flies out. The man who shot last 
pulls for his successor, — but standing behind him, so that the latter cannot 
see which cord he pulls, and is therefore uncertain which of the eight 
pigeons will fly out : if the pigeon falls within the wall after his fire, it is 
reckoned his ; if not, it does not count. Every man has a double-barrel- 
led gun, and may use both barrels. 

The two most famous shots in England, are Captain de Roos and Mr 
Osbaldistone. They shot for a wager of a thousand pounds which is not 
yet decided. Neither missed once ; and Captain de Roos's birds never fell 
twelve paces from the spot, and scarcely fluttered, but dropped like stones 
almost the moment he fired. Never did I see such admirable shooting. 
A pretty little spaniel belonging to the Club fetched every pigeon, and per- 
formed his duty like a machine, without either delay, neglect or hurry. At 
last the whole party shot for a golden vase of two hundred pounds value, 
(the annual prize of the Club,) which was won by Captain de Roos. 

I did not get away from this jolly breakfast till seven o'clock, when I went 
to a little theatre, as yet unknown to me, called Sadler's Wells, which is a 
good three-quarters of a mile (German) from my dwelling. I went in a 
hackney coach. When I wanted to go home, towards one o'clock, I could 
find no coach in this out-of-the-way place, and all the houses were shut. 
This was the more disagreeable, as I had really not the least idea in what 
part of the town I was. 

After wandering about the streets in vain for half an hour in search of a 
coach, I resigned myself to the idea of finding my way home on foot, with 
the aid of a watchman, when a stage coach came by which was going my 
way, and with which I happily regained my Penates about two o'clock. — 
The peculiarity of this theatre is that it contains real water, in which ele- 
ment the actors splash and dabble about by the hour together, like ducks or 
water rats : ' au reste,' nothing can surpass the nonsense of the melodrame, 
nor the horror of the singing by which it was accompanied. 

June 20j$. 

I have been to another fancy ball, which has left only a melancholy im- 
pression on my mind. I remarked a pale man wrapped in a plain black 
domino, on whose countenance indescribable traces of the bitterest mental 

suffering were imprinted. It was not long before I asked L about him, 

and he told me as follows : 

" This truly pitiable man might serve as the hero of a fearful romance. 
If it can be said of any one that he was born to misfortune, that is the man. 
Early in life he lost his large property by the fraudulent bankruptcy of a 
friend. A hundred times since has Fortune approached him, but only to 
mock him with hopes which were invariably dashed from him at the deci- 
sive moment : in almost every case it was some insignificant trifle — the 
delay of a letter — some easy mistake — some indisposition, slight in itself 
but disastrous in its consequences, that wrecked everything ; apparently, 
always by his own fault, and yet, in fact, a tissue woven by mocking, ma- 
lignant spirits. 

" For a long time past he has made no more attempts to alter his condi- 
tion ; he seeks no improvement of his lot, persuaded beforehand, by long 
and cruel experience, that nothing can ever succeed with him. I have 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 261 

known liim from youth up. Though guileless and unoffending as a child, 
the world in general deems him malignant ; though one of the most up- 
right of men, false and intriguing ; he is shunned and dreaded, though 
never did a heart beat more warmly for the weal of others. The girl he 
adored committed suicide in consequence of his suspected infidelity. He 
found himself, by a series of unheard-of circumstances, accused of the 
murder of his brother, near whom he was found bleeding, having risked 
his life in his defence : — he was saved from an ignominious death only by 
the King's pardon ; and it was not till some time afterwards that the proofs 
of his innocence came to light. Lastly, a woman with whom he was be- 
trayed into marriage by an infamous and long protracted system of deceit, 
ran away with another man, and artfully contrived that, in the eyes of the 
world, the greater portion of the blame should rest with him. — All confi- 
dence in himself thus utterly crushed and blighted, every hope in destiny or 
in men annihilated, he lives among them like an unsympathizing, uncon- 
nected ghost, — a heart-rending example that there are beings who (as far 
as this life is concerned) seem to be sold to the Devil before their birth ; 
for when the curse of destiny has once scathed a man, it not only raises up 
to him enemies at every step, but robs him of the confidence and, in time, 
of the hearts of his friends ; till at length the unhappy one, crushed, reject- 
ed, and trodden under foot on every side, lays down his weary, wounded 
head, and dies ; while his last sigh appears to the pitiless crowd an assump- 
tion and an intolerable discord. Wo to the unlucky ! Threefold wo to 
them. For to them there is neither virtue, nor wisdom, nor skill, nor joy 1 
There is but one good for them ; and that is — death." 

June 25th. 
There is certainly something pleasant in having so many invitations at 
your disposal every day ; and, if you are not pleased in one place, in being 
able immediately to seek out company that suits you better. Here and 
there, too, one finds something new, piquant, and interesting. Yester- 
day, at Prince L 's, for instance, I met with a second Ninon de l'En- 

clos. Certainly nobody would take Lady A , to be more than forty, 

and yet I was assured she is near eighty. Nothing in her appears forced 
or unnatural, but every thing youthful ; figure, dress, air, vivacity of man- 
ners, grace and elasticity of limb, as far as this is discernible at a party, — 
all about her is perfectly young, and scarcely a wrinkle in her face. She 
has never made herself anxious, and has lived a very gay life from her 
youth up : she ran away from her husband twice, on which account she 
quitted England for a long time, and spent her large fortune in Paris. 
Altogether she is a very ' amiable' person, more French than English in 
her deportment, and quite * du grand monde.' The science of the toilet 
she has studied profoundly, and has made some important discoveries in it. 
From all I could see of the results, I should be very glad to impart them 
to you and my other fair friends. 

Next day the Duke of S gave a ' dejeune champetre' at his villa, at 

which invention was racked for something new in an entertainment of the 
kind. His whole house was hung with beautiful ' hautelisse' and gay Chi- 
nesejiangings ; — a multitude of sofas, easy chairs, ' chaises longues,' mir- 
rors, &c, in all parts of the garden as well as of the rooms ; besides a 
little encampment of tents of white and rose-coloured muslin, which had a 
beautiful effect, set in the emerald-green of the grounds. 

In the evening, followed, as usual, an illumination, consisting chiefly of 
single lamps, half-hidden in tree and bush, like so many ruddy fruits or 



2G2 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

bright-glow worms, enticing the loving or the lonely. Those who pre- 
ferred noisy to quiet pleasures also found their heart's desire. Here, a 
large part of the company was dancing in a wide tent, the way to which 
lay under a bowery archway of roses, brilliantly illuminated ; — there, re- 
sounded a delightful concert, executed by the best performers from the 
Italian Opera. Italian weather, too, happily shone on this fete from be- 
ginning to end ; any little mischievous spirit of air might have totally 
ruined it. 

I have now so disposed my affairs that I shall be able to quit England 
in a month at furthest, to make a longer tour in Wales, and more espe- 
cially in Ireland ; which latter country, according to all I hear of it, excites 
my interest much more than even Scotland. Yet I am sorry that illness 
first, and the distractions of the metropolis aftervwards, have robbed me of 
the sight of that country. It is an omission I must enter in my book of 
sins, which, alas ! contains so many under the same head — Indolence — 
that terrible foe of man ! Certainly that French Marshal in Louis the 
fourteenth's time, — a time so unfavourable to ' parvenus,' answered rightly, 
when he was asked, how it was possible that he could have raised himself 
to the highest dignities cf his profession from the condition of a common 
soldier, "Only by this means," said he ; " I never deferred till to-morrow 
what I could do to-day." 

Almost under the same head may be classed Indecision, that other here- 
ditary foe of the species, which another celebrated Marshal, Suvaroff, 
hated so much, that, with the usual exaggerations of his character, he 
instantly withdrew all favour from a man who replied to any question he 
asked him, " 1 don't know." 

' Non mi ricordo' does better ; and according to my principles I apply 
this to all the above-named sins, when once they are committed. We 
ought daily to repeat to ourselves, The past is dead, the future only lives. 
May it smile upon us, dearest Julia ! 

Your faithful L— — . 



LETTER XXIV. 

Cobham Hall, June 30th. 
Beloved Feiend, 

After I had sent away my letter to you, and made an excursion into 
the country with some ladies, I drove to a party at the Duke of Clarence's, 
where there was, this time, such a genuine English squeeze, that I and 
several others could by no means get in ; and went away, after waiting 
half an hour, ' re infecta,' to console ourselves at another ball. The mass 
in the first room was so jammed together that several men put on their 
hats, that they might have their arms more at liberty for active service. 
Ladies, covered with jewels were regularly ' milled,' and fell, or rather 
stood, fainting : cries, groans, curses, and sighs, were the only sounds to 
be heard. Some only laughed ; and, inhuman as it was, I must accuse 
myself of having been among these latter ; for really it was too droll to hear 
this called society. To say truth, I never saw any thing equal to it before. 

Early the next morning I rode to Cobham Hall, to spend a hw days 

there on occasion of Lord D 's birthday, which was celebrated to-day 

in a rural and unpretending manner. Excepting myself, there was no 
one but the family, which was increased by the presence of the elder son 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 263 

and his beautiful and charming wife, who usually reside in Ireland. All 
was ordered for domestic enjoyment. We dined early, in order that we 

might be present at a supper in the open air, which Lord D gave to 

all his labourers, about a hundred in number. It was managed with the 
greatest decorum. We sat next to the iron fence in the pleasure-ground, 
and the tables for the people were placed on the new-mown grass. First, 
about fifty young girls, from the Lancasterian school which Lady D — > — 
has established in the park, were regaled with tea and cakes. They were 
all dressed alike, and very prettily too ; they were children of from six to 
fourteen. After them came the labourers, and seated themselves at a 
long table plentifully furnished with enormous dishes of roast beef, vege- 
tables, and pudding. Each brought his own knife and fork and earthen 
pot. The servants of the house set on the dinner, did the honours, and 
poured out the beer from great watering-pots. The village musicians 
played- all the while, and were really better than ours ; they were also bet- 
ter dressed. On the other hand the labourers did not look so well or so 
neat as our Wends in their Sunday clothes. No one was invited except 
those who constantly worked for Lord D . The health of every mem- 
ber of the family was drunk with nine times nine ; on which our old 

coachman Child, (now in Lord D 's service,) who is a kind of English 

improvisatore, got upon the middle of the table, and delivered a most 
comical speech in verse, in which I was introduced, and truly with this 
wish, — 

To have always plenty of gold, 

And never to become old ; 

the double impossibility of which sounded rather ironical. 

During all this time, and till it was dark, the little girls danced and 
skipped about incessantly, with great gravity, on the grass, without any 
sort of plan or connectedness, like puppets, — whether the music played or 
not. Our party in the pleasure ground was at length attacked by the 
dancing mania; and I myself constrained to break my vow, fori could not 
possibly refuse to dance with such a partner as lady D . 

July 4th. 
I have not been so happy and amused for a long time as here. In the 
morning I make excursions in the beautiful country, or drive in lady 

D 's little one horse phaeton about the fields and park, without road or 

path ; and in the evening I, like the rest, take only just so much part in the 
conversation as I like. Yesterday after dinner we all sat (nine persons) at 
least a couple of hours together in the library, reading, — each, of course 
I mean, in his own book, — -without one single word being spoken. At 
which peripatetic silence we at last, all by common consent, laughed. We 
thought of the Englishman at Paris, who maintained ' que parler e'etoit 
gater la conversation.' After visiting the Lancasterian school I mention- 
ed, — where one person teaches sixty girls, some of whom come from the 
remotest parts of Lord D 's estate, many miles, daily — I rode to Ro- 
chester to see the fine ruin of the old castle. What has not been destroyed 
by violence stands like a rock, from the time of William the Conqueror. 
The remains of the eating-hall, with its colossal pillars united by richly 
ornamented Saxon arches, are singularly fine. The stone ornaments were 
all carved in Normandy, and sent hither by water. I mounted the highest 
point of the ruin, whence I had a noble view of the union of the Thames 
and the Medway, the towns of Rochester and Chatham, with the dock- 
yards of the latter, and a richly cultivated country. 



264 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

At dinner our company received an addition, — Mr and Mrs P , 

Mr M , and a nephew of Lord D 's. Mrs P told a good 

anecdote of Kemble the actor. On a professional tour in the provinces, 
he acted in a piece in which a camel is introduced. He told the ' decora- 
teur' that, as he had just seen, there was a camel actually in the town, and 
that he had better therefore go and look at it, that he might make his arti- 
ficial one as like it as possible. The man seemed extremely annoyed, and 
replied, he was sorry gentlemen in London thought people in the country 
were so ignorant ; for his part, he flattered himself that, without going to 
look at any thing, he should produce a more natural camel this evening 
than any that was walking about the streets. 

The following day we rode out, and this time in company with the ladies, 
after which we went on the water in Lord D— — 's elegant yacht. I was 
to drive the party down to the Thames, four-in-hand, in which I have had 
so little practice of late years, that at a crossway the leaders, in spite of my 
efforts, ran their heads against a stage-coach driving across us : — this oc- 
casioned a scream in both the carriages, which greatly incensed old Child, 
who looks upon me as his pupil. 

Thus, like the great Corsican, in one day I lost all my renown in the 
high art of guiding the reins — from the throne, ycleped ruling, — from the 
box, driving. I was therefore obliged to abdicate the latter, since the ladies 
maintained that my possession of this exalted seat was attended with too 
much danger to them. This mortified me so sorely, that when we got on 
board the yacht I climbed up the shrouds, and seated myself at the mast- 
head, where, fanned by a mild zephyr, I admired at my ease the ever- 
changing prospect, and philosophized on my downfall. 

July 5th. 
After I had vigorously assisted in hewing out some new prospects in the 
thicket, (at which we all lent a hand,) and planned a road through the 
park which is to be so far honoured as to bear my name, I took a cordial 
leave of this most estimable family, (who might serve as a pattern to the 
nobility of any country,) and returned to London., provided with many let- 
ters of introduction for Ireland. 

July Stk. 

As before I depart I mean to send you all sorts of things, with my 
horses, carriage and birds, (of the latter you will receive a complete cargo 
of the rarest sorts, I have had enough to do to-day to complete my pur- 
chases. In the course of this occupation I fell upon an exhibition of ma- 
chinery and manufactures, among which are many interesting things ; as, 
for instance, a machine which draws of itself, (if I may say so,) all the ob- 
jects visible within its horizon, in perspective : a piano-forte which, besides 
serving the usual purpose, plays (extra) a hundred pieces by itself, which 
you may accompany with extemporary ' fantasie' on the keys : a very com- 
pendious domestic telegraph, which spares the servants half their labour, 
and us nearly all their burdensome presence : a washing machine, which 
requires only one woman to wash a great quantity of linen : a most elegant 
churn, with which you can make butter on your breakfast table in two 
minutes ; and other novelties of the like kind. 

From hence I drove to the greatest nursery garden in the neighbour- 
hood of London, which I had long wished to see. The multifold wants 
of such a number of rich people raise private undertakings to a magnitude 
and extent in England which they reach nowhere else. On such a scale 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 265 

I found a collection cf green-houses in this garden. In many were small 
leaden tubes, carried along the edges of the glass roof, — three or four on 
each side : the tubes are perforated with very small holes : by only turning 
a cock, a stream of water is carried through them ; and in one-moment 
the whole house is filled with a thick shower, just like natural rain. This 
makes the labour of watering almost unnecessary, has a much more pow- 
erful and uniform effect, and only requires some aid where the leaves are 
too large and thick to allow the rain to penetrate. 

Without going into the details of the innumerable sorts of pines, roses, 
&c, I must only remark, that in the department of esculent vegetables, 
there were four hundred and thirty-five sorts of salad, two hundred and 
sixty-one of peas, and two hundred and forty of potatoes, — and all other 
articles of garden commerce in the same proportion. 

On my way back I met the Tyrolers, who had been making holiday, and 
asked my old acquaintance (the girl) how she was pleased with her stay 
here. She declared with enthusiasm that her Saint must have brought her 
here ; for that they had made 7000Z. sterling in a kw months, which they 
had earned — hard money — only with singing their dozen songs. 

Prince Esterhazy has made this Gejodle* the fashion here, and fashion 
in England is every thing. Sontag and Pasta, with their wonderful talents, 
have chiefly this to thank for their success — they were the fashion ; for 
Weber, who did not understand the art of making himself fashionable, 
gained, as is well known, almost nothing ; — the two Bohrers, Kiesewetter, 
and other men of real genius, were not more fortunate. 

While I am talking of fashion, it seems a suitable occasion, before I quit 
England, to enter a little more at large on the subject of the structure and 
tone of English society, which is certainly rather more striking to a 
stranger in this admired land, than fog, steam-engines, or stage-coaches. It 
is not necessary to remark here, that in such general descriptions only the 
most prominent and reigning peculiarities are taken into consideration, 
and that, in the censure which is passed on the whole, the hundred honour- 
able exceptions which exhibit the praiseworthy contrast in such full per- 
fection, are left wholly out of the account. 

England is now — viewed, certainly, with relation to a totally different 
universal spirit of the age — in a similar state to th^t of France thirty years 
before the revolution. And it will fall out with her as with her great rival, 
if she does not avert the storm by radical but continuous'reform. Nearly- 
allied fundamental evils are present here, as there. On the one side, the 
undue preponderance, misused power, inflexible stony arrogance, and heart- 
less frivolity of the great ; on the other, selfishness and rapacity are grown 
into the national character of the mass of the people. Religion no longer 
dwells in the heart and spirit, but is become a dead form ; notwithstanding 
the most unenlightened spirit of Catholicism, — with fewer ceremonies, in- 
deed, but combined with like intolerance, and a similar hierarchy ; and 
which besides the bigotry and the pride of Rome, has this over and above, 
that it possesses an enormous share of the property of the country. f 

*The peculiar Alpine cry at the end of the Tyrol songs, which is heard to an immense 
distance, is called the Jodie. — Transl. 

t It is very extraordinary that English wiiters should constantly torture themselves to 
discover the causes of the enormous poor-rates, and of the more and more aitificial and 
threatening stale of the working classes, when there exists so obvious a discouragement 
to the outlay of capital and industry on land, (some of which with us would be called 
good, but here is esteemed not worth cultivation,) as tithes :— a man does not care to 
devote his capital and his sweat to a priest. — Editor. 

34 



266 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Like causes have also given an analogous tone and direction to what is 
pre-eminently called, Society. Experience will confirm this to every man 
who has access to what is called high life in England ; and it will he highly 
interesting to him to observe how different a growth and aspect the same 
plant has assumed in France and England, in consequence of the original 
difference of the soil ; for in France it grew rather out of chivalry and 
poetry, combined with the dominant vanity of the nation, with levity of 
character, and a real delight in social existence : — in England, out of a 
brutal feudal tyranny, the commercial prosperity of later years, an ill-hu- 
mour and moroseness innate in the nation, and a cold stony self-love. 

People on the continent generally form to themselves a more or less 
republican picture of English society. In the public life of the nation this 
is certainly very observable, — as also in their domestic habits, in which 
selfishness is strangely prevalent. Grown-up children and parents soon 
become almost strangers ; and what we call domestic life-' is therefore ap- 
plicable only to husband, wife, and little children living in immediate de- 
pendence on their father ; as soon as they grow up, a republican coldness 
and estrangement take place between them and their parents. An English 
poet maintains, that the love of a grandfather to his grandchildren arises 
from this — that in his grown-up sons he sees only greedy and hostile heirs, 
— in his grandchildren, the future enemies of his enemies. The very 
thought could never have arisen but in an English brain ! 

In the relations and tone of society, on the other hand, from the highest 
step to the very lowest, not a trace of any element of republicanism is to 
be found. Here, everything is in the highest degree ultra-aristocratic — it 
is caste-like. The present so-called great world would probably have 
taken a different form and character if a Court, in the continental sense of 
the word, had given tone and direction in the highest instance. 

Such a one, however, does not here exist. The Kings of England live 
like private men; most of the high officers about the Court are little more 
than nominal, and are seldom assembled except on occasions of great 
ceremony. Now, as somewhere in society a focus must be organized, 
from which the highest light and the highest authority in all matters con- 
nected with society must emanate, the rich aristocracy seemed here called 
to assume this station. ^ 

It was, however, spite of all its wealth and puissance, not yet qualified 
to maintain such a station unquestioned. The English nobility, haughty 
as it is, can scarcely measure itself against the French in antiquity and 
purity of blood (if any value is to be attached to such things), and in no 
degree against the higher German nobility, which is for the most part 
intact. | It dazzles only by the old historic names so wisely retained, 
which appear through the whole of English history like standing masks ; 
though new families, often of very mean and even discreditable extraction, 
(such as descendants of mistresses, and the like), are continually con- 
cealed behind them. The English aristocracy has indeed the most solid 
advantages over those of all other countries — from its real wealth, and yet 
more from the share in the legislative power allotted to it by the Consti- 
tution: but as it is not upon these grounds that it chooses to assert or to 
justify its supremacy, but precisely upon its assumed noble blood and 
higher extraction, the pretension must, unquestionably, appear to the rest 

* Hauslichkeit. We have not the word — unhappily. — Transl. 

t The curious in such matters may find some amusement in the inquiry, whether or 
not there exists in England one drop of stiftfiihiges blut — of that sort, namely, common 
throughout Germany, which can prove its seventy-two quarterings. — Transi.. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 267 

of the world doubly ludicrous. The members of the aristocracy probably 
had an instinctive feeling of this; and thus, by a tacit convention — not 
nobility, not wealth, but an entirely new power was placed upon the 
throne, as supreme and absolute sovereign — Fashion: a goddess who in 
England alone, reigns in person, (if I may so express myself), with des- 
potic and inexorable sway, — though always represented to mortal eyes 
by a few clever usurpers of either sex. 

The spirit of caste, which, emanating from this source, descends through 
all stages of society in greater or less force, has received here a power, 
consistency and full development, wholly unexampled in any other coun- 
try. The having visited on an intimate footing in a lower class is sufficient 
to ensure you an extremely cold reception in the very next step of the 
ladder; and no Brahmin can shrink with more horror from all contact 
with a Paria, than an 'Exclusive' from intercourse with a 'Nobody.'-— 
Every class of society, as well as every field, in England is separated 
from every other by a hedge of thorns. Each has its own manners and 
turns of expression, — its 'cant' language, as it is called, and, above all, 
a supreme and absolute contempt for all below it. Of course every 
reflecting person sees at a glance, that a society so constituted must 
necessarily become eminently provincial (Jdcinstadiisch, i. e. small- 
toicnish) in its several coteries; and this strikingly distinguishes it from the 
large and cosmopolitan society of Paris. 

Now, although the aristocracy, as I have remarked, does not stand as 
suck on the pinnacle of this strange edifice, it yet* exercises great influence 
over it. Tt is indeed difficult to become fashionable without being of good 
descent ; but it by no means follows, that a man is so in virtue of being 
well born — still less of being rich. It sounds ludicrous to say, (but 
yet it is true), that the present King for instance, is a very fashionable 
man; that his father was not in the least degree so, and that none of his 
brothers have any pretension to fashion; — which unquestionably is highly 
to their honour: — for no man who has any personal claims to distinction, 
would be frivolous enough long to have either the power or the will to 
maintain himself in that category. On the other hand, it would be a 
doubtful and critical matter to affirm decidedly what are the qualities 
which secure the highest places in that exalted sphere. You see alter- 
nately the most heterogeneous qualities occupy a post in it; and political 
motives, in a country like this, cannot be entirely without influence: yet 
I believe that caprice and luck, and, above all, women, here, as in the 
rest of the world, do more than anything else. 

On the whole, fashionable Englishmen, however unable they may be 
to lay aside their native heaviness and pedantry, certainly betray the most 
intense desire to rival the dissolute frivolity and ' jactance' of the old Court 
of France in their fullest extent; while in exactly the same proportion the 
French now seek to exchange this character for old English earnestness, 
and daily advance towards higher and more dignified purposes and views 
of existence. 

A London Exclusive of the present day is in truth nothing more than a 
bad, flat, dull impression of a ' roue' of the Regency and a courtier of 
Louis the Fifteenth: both have, in common, selfishness, levity, boundless 
vanity, and an utter want of heart; both think they can set themselves 
above everything by means of contempt, derision and insolence; bolh 
creep in the dust before one idol alone — the Frenchman of the last age, 
before his King — the Englishman of this, before any acknowledged ruler 



268 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

in the empire of fashion. But what a contrast if we look further! In 
France, the absence of all morality and honesty was at least in some degree 
atoned for by the most refined courtesy; the poverty of soul, by wit and 
agreeableness ; the impertinence of considering themselves as something 
better than other people, rendered bearable by finished elegance and 
politeness of manners; and egotistical vanity in some measure justified, or 
at least excused, by the brilliancy of an imposing Court, a high-bred air 
and address, the perfect art of polished intercourse, winning ' aisance,' 
and a conversation captivating by "its wit and lightness.— What of all this 
has the English ' dandy' to oiler? 

His highest triumph is to appear with the most wooden manners, as 
little polished as will suffice to avoid castigation ; nay, to contrive even 
his civilities so, that they are as near as may be to affronts : — this indeed 
is the style of deportment which confers upon him the greatest celebrity. 
Instead of a noble, high-bred ease, — to have the courage to offend against 
every restraint of decorum : to invert the relation in which our sex stands 
to women, so that they appear the attacking, and he the passive or defen- 
sive party; — to treat his best friends, if they cease to have the stamp and 
authority of fashion, as if he did not know them, — " to cut them," as the 
technical phrase goes ; to delight in the ineffably ' fade' jargon, and the 
affectation of his 'set;' and always to know what is l the thing:' — these 
are pretty nearly the accomplishments which form a young ' lion' of the 
world of fashion. If he has, moreover, a remarkably pretty mistress, and 
if it has also happened to him to induce some foolish woman to sacrifice 
herself on the altar of fashion, and to desert husband and children for him, 
his reputation reaches its highest ' nimbus.' If, added to this, he spends 
a great deal of money, if he is young, and if his name is in the ' Peerage,' 
he can hardly fail to play a transient part ; at any rale he possesses in 
full measure all the ingredients that go to make a Richelieu of our days. 
That his conversation consists only of the most trivial local jests and 
scandal, which he whispers into the ear of a woman in a large party, 
without deigning to remark that there is anybody in the room but himself 
and the happy object of his delicate attentions ; that with men he can 
talk only of gambling or of sporting ; that, except a few fashionable 
phrases which the shallowest head can the most easily retain, he is deplora- 
bly ignorant ; that his awkward ' tournure' goes not beyond the ' noncha- 
lance' of a plough-boy, who stretches himself at his length on the ale-house 
settle ; and that his grace is very like that of a bear which has been taught 
to dance, — all this does not rob his crown of a single jewel. 

Worse still is it, that, notwithstanding the high-bred rudeness of his 
exterior, the moral condition of his inward man must, to be fashionable, 
stand far lower. That cheating is prevalent in the various kinds of play 
which are here the order of the day, and that when long successfully 
practised it gives a sort of 'relief,' is notorious: but it is still more strik- 
ing, that no attempt is made to conceal that ' crasse' selfishness which 
lies at the bottom of such transactions, — nay, that it is openly avowed as 
the only rational principle of action, and ' good-nature' is laughed at and 
despised as the ' comble' of vulgarity. This is the case in no other coun- 
try : in all others, people are ashamed of such modes of thinking, even if 
they are wretched enough to hold them. "We are a selfish people," 
said a favourite leader of fashion, " I confess ; and I do believe that what 
in other countries is called ' amor patriae' is amongst us nothing but a 
huge conglomeration of love of ourselves: but I am glad of it; I like 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 269 

selfishness ; there's good sense in it ;" — and ho added, not satirically, but 
quite in earnest, " Good-nature is quite l mauvais ton' in London ; and 
really it is a bad style to take up, and will never do." 

It is true that if you choose to analyze and hunt down every feeling 
with the greatest subtlety, you may discover a sort of selfishness at the 
very bottom of everything ; but in all other nations a noble shame throws 
a viel over it ; as there are instincts very natural and innocent, which are 
yet concealed even by the most uncivilized. 

Here," however, people are so little ashamed of the most ' crasse' self- 
love, that an Englishman of rank once instructed me that a good ' fox- 
hunter' must let nothing stop him, or distract his attention when following 
the fox ; and if his own father should be thrown in leaping a ditch, and 
lie there, should, he said, ' if he could'nt help it,' leap his horse over him, 
and trouble himself no more about him till the end of the chase.* 

With all this, our pattern 'dandy' has not the least independence, even 
in his bad qualities : he is the trembling slave of fashion, even in the 
extremest trifles ; and the obsequious, servile satellite of the fortunate in- 
dividuals who are higher than himself. Were virtue and modesty sud- 
denly to become the fashion, nobody would be more exemplary, — difficult 
as would be the task to accomplish. 

Destitute of all originality, and without a thought he can properly call 
his own, he may be compared to a clay figure, which, for a while, deceives 
one with all the properties of a human being, but returns into its native 
mud as soon as you discover that it has not a soul. 

Whoever reads the best of the recent English novels — those by the au- 
thor of Pelham — may be able to abstract from them a tolerably just idea 
of English fashionable society; provided (N.B.) he does not forget to 
deduct qualities which national self-love has claimed, though quite erro- 
neously : — namely, grace for its ' roues,' — seductive manners and amusing 
conversation for its ' dandies.' I mixed for a while with those who dwell 
on the very pinnacle of this fool's world of fashion ; with those who inha- 
bit its middle regions, and with those who have pitched their tents at its 
foot, whence they turn longing, lingering looks at the unattainable sum- 
mit ; but rarely did I ever find a vestige of that attractive art of social 
life, that perfect equipoise of all the social talents, which diffuses a feeling 
of complacency over all within its sphere ; — as far removed from stiffness 
and prudery as from rudeness and license, which speaks with equal charm 
to the heart and the head, and continually excites, while it never wearies ; 
an art of which the French so long remained the sole masters and models. 

Instead of this, 1 saw in the fashionable world only too frequently, and 
with few exceptions, a profound vulgarity of thought ; an immorality little 
veiled or adorned ; the most undisguised arrogance ; and the coarsest ne- 
glect of all kindly feelings and attentions haughtily assumed, for the sake of 
shining in a false and despicable ' refinement,' even more inane and intol- 
erable to a healthy mind, than the awkward and ludicrous stiffness of the 
most declared Nobodies. It has been said that vice and poverty are the 
most revolting combination : — since I have been in England, vice and boor- 
ish rudeness seem to me to form a still more disgusting union. 
****** *** 

Passing over some of the most remarkable English rulers of fashion, I 
must mention one foreign potentate, who has placed herself on the same 
throne with the highest. 

* Certainly the motto of the Paris Society, 'Aide toi, !e ciel t'aidera,' has never 
been carried so far ' in praxi.' — Editor. 



270 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

The haughty and masculine spirit of this lady, which, when she chooses, 
she knows how to conceal under the most engaging affability, combined 
with all the diplomatic craftiness of her station, have enabled her to set her 
foot on the neck of English supremacy ; but she has not been able to give 
to the court that surrounds her and bows blindly to all her decrees, either 
her wit and tact, or her high-born air, or that repulsive politeness to all, 
which is the ' ne plus ultra' of the manner which it is the main object of an 
Exclusive's life to attain. The distance in these respects between her and 
her associates in sovereignty is almost burlesque ; yet they rule side by side 
in Olympus. But even the immortal gods have to encounter opposition ; 

and thus we find a gigantic antagonist in the monarch of the nether world. 

********* 

At his house are to be seen many of the ' Dii minores gentium,' such as 

actresses turned into duchesses and countesses, &c. who are not admitted 

into the circle 'par excellence.' 
********* 

A high degree of influence is also possessed by a foreign ambassador; and 
without doubt he would possess the very highest, if the best tone, kind-heart- 
ed amiability, high rank, the finest taste, and (notwithstanding an assumed 
English ; tournure') a perfect absence of that heaviness and pedantry, of 
which English fashionables can never divest themselves, constituted the 
sole claims to pre-eminence. But it is precisely because he is too far re- 
moved from the English, both by that native amiability which continually 
gains an involuntary conquest over his ' Anglo manie,' and by his German 
cordiality, that he excites their envy rather than their admiration ; and 
though ' recherche' by most, because he is the fashion, remains a strange 
meteor in their system, whom they attack where they can, and whom, at 
all events, they cannot take to their hearts as they do their own Jupiter 
Amnion, nor acknowledge in him ' autorite sans replique' with that blind 
submission they pay to their Autocratess. Perhaps the wife of the ambass- 
ador might easily have played the part of that lady, whom she excels in 
beauty as well as in youth ; and for a time the chances stood equal be- 
tween them ; but she was too heedless, too natural and good-tempered to 
obtain a definitive conquest. However high therefore be her place in the 
fashionable world, her rival has unquestionably achieved the highest. No- 
body who knows the causes will think the loser the less amiable. 

Among the other female rulers of the first category, I must mention one 
or two whom no one may omit who seeks entrance into the sanctuary. 
At the very top, is a no longer young but still lovely Countess ; one of the 
very few Englishwoman of whom it can be said, that she possesses a perfect, 
and truly distinguished ' tournure.' With her natural gifts she would, in 
any other country, have been thoroughly amiable and delightful ; but here 
none can escape the deadening impress of that spirit of caste, so utterly 

blighted to all that is lovely and loving in the human heart. 

********* 

In the age of innocence of the English world of fashion, when the natives 
as yet were fain to copy continental manners, and had not attained to that 
independence which now asserts its claim to serve as model to other coun- 
tries, a Dandy governed by means of his coat ; and the celebrated Brum- 
mel tyrannized over town and country, by this simple instrument, during 
long years of glory. But this is no longer the case : the sublime Exclu- 
sive, on the contrary, affects a certain inattention to his dress, which is 
almost always alike ; and is quite above running after or inventing new 
fashions : his dress is at most distinguished only for exquisite neatness and 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 271 

delicacy of texture. Far other qualities are now necessary to constitute 
a man of fashion. He must, as formerly in France, have the reputation 
of a heartless seducer, and be a dangerous man. But as, with all the good- 
will in the world, it is not so easy for men of graceless manners and invin- 
cible awkwardness to rival the brilliant charm and captivating address of 
the Frenchman of the * Vieille Cour,'it is necessary, like Tartuffe, to play 
the soft and insidious hypocrite ; with the subdued voice which is now the 
fashion, and false words, to make a way in the dark to unprincipled acts ; 
such as false play, or the 'gulling' of a novice in every species of sport, 
in which so many young Englishmen find despair and suicide, where they 
sought recreation and excitement ; — where these arts are not applicable, 
to seek, by all sorts of intrigue, to destroy the fortune and reputation of 
those who stand in their way, or, at the least, to rob them of all influence 
in exclusive society. 

He who is intimately acquainted with England's dark side, will not 
accuse me of exaggeration in this description. * * * 

********* 

Let a man's moral and intellectual qualities be what they may, if he is the 
fashion, he can say or do nothing that will not be received with admiration 
and applause. His words are oracles $ his wit must be exquisite, since he 
has received his patent for it from fashionable society ; and where Fashion 
speaks, the free Englishman is a slave. Besides, the vulgar feel that in all 
matters of art, talent or taste, they are no very competent judges ; they 
therefore think it safer blindly to applaud a ' bon mot' when they see it has 
made their superiors laugh ; or to repeat an opinion which has proceeded 
from privileged lips : — just as the public were in the third heavens with 
ecstasy for a whole winter at a party of Tyrolese ballad-singers, and 
rained down money, which the green butcher-family pocketed with a 
lauo-h. * * * * * * * 

* v * * * * #• * *• # 

The far-famed Almack's, and the unrivalled puissance of the Lady-Patron- 
esses, I have already described to you. I must add two signal acts of their 
power. 

In a fit of pretty ill-humour these high and mighty Ladies ordered that 
no person who came after midnight should be admitted. Soon after, the 
Duke of Wellington came from the House of Lords a few minutes too late, 
and thought he should be certain to find an exception in his favour. ' Point 
du tout' — the hero of Waterloo could not carry this fortress, and was 
obliged to retreat. 

Another time the Lady Patronesses issued a decree, that only gentlemen 
who were bow-legged should be permitted to appear in loose pantaloons : 
all others were ordered to wear breeches ; — in England, where the very 
name is forbidden, certainly a bold decree. 

The dread of the new tribunal of inquisition was so great, that at first 
even this edict was obeyed. But a reaction followed. A great number 
of gentlemen appeared at the door in the prohibited pantaloons, and de- 
manded admittance on the plea of crooked legs, of which they declared 
themselves guilty ; and, in case they were not believed, invited the Lady- 
Patronesses to convince themselves of the fact by personal inspection. 
From that time the Ladies have winked at this offending portion of male 
attire. 

July 10th. 
To-morrow I hope to be able to take my way to wider and freer regions ; 
and it will be some time before I resume the pent-up life of a city. 



272 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Lord Byron somewhere says of himself, that his eoul never enjoyed its 
full activity but in solitude. This truth is applicable to lesser people, for 
it is just so with me. In wearisome society I am but half conscious of a 
soul : and I am oppressed by the horrible thought — Now, if possible, you 
must be 'amiable.' On the other hand, I am, as you know, least alone 
when alone ; for then do I the least miss your society, my best of friends ! 

However distant you may be, my spirit hovers around your waking and 
your dreaming hours ; and over sea and mountain my heart feels the af- 
fectionate pulse of yours. L — — . 



LETTER XXV. 

Cheltenham, July 12, 1828. 
My Dear Julia, 

I left London at two o'clock in the morning, very ill and out of spirits; 
in harmony with the weather, which was perfectly ' a l'Anglaise.' It 
blew a hurricane, and rained water-spouts. About eight o'clock, how- 
ever, the sky cleared. I had been lulled into a gentle slumber by the 
rapid and easy roll of the carriage j all nature shone with an emerald 
brightness, and a delicious fragrance poured in at the open windows from 
every field and flower ; and your care-worn, melancholy friend was again, 
in a few moments, the light-hearted child rejoicing in the beautiful world, 
and in its mighty and merciful Creator. Travelling in England is, indeed, 
most delightful. Could I but witness your pleasure in it! Could I but 
feel my own doubled by your participation ! It rained occasionally 
through the day, but I was little incommoded by this in a close carriage, 
and found the air mild and balmy. The former part of the country 
through which our road lay, teemed with all the luxuriant vegetation of 
the most beautiful park ; the next presented boundless corn fields with- 
out hedges, which is a rarity in England j and the last nearly resembled 
the rich plains of Lombardy. I passed many large parks, which, how- 
ever, weather being uncertain, and time limited, I left unvisited. It is 
not easy, after my long park and garden chase through half England, 
to find any thing new of this kind. In Cirencester I visited a beautiful 
Gothic church of great antiquity, with windows of coloured glass in pretty 
good preservation, and curious grotesque carvings. It is a grievous pity 
that the Gothic churches in England, without exception, are defaced by 
tasteless modern grave-stones and monuments. 

Late in the evening I reached Cheltenham, an extremely pretty water- 
ing-place, of an elegance nowhere to be found on the continent. Even 
the splendid gas-lights and the new villa-looking houses, each surrounded 
by its little flower-garden, put the mind into a cheerful and agreeable tone. 
I arrived, too, just in the hour when the contest between the light of day 
and the artificial illumination produces a peculiar and, to me, pleasing 
effect. As I entered the inn, which, I might almost call magnificent, and 
ascended the snow-white stone staircase, ornamented with a gilt bronze 
railing, and trod on fresh and brilliant carpets, lighted by two servants to 
my room, I gave myself up, * con amore,' to the feeling of comfort' which 
can be found in perfection nowhere but in England. In this point of view, 
it is a country completely made for a misanthrope like myself; — since all 
that is unconnected with social life, all that a man can procure with money, 
is excellent and perfect in its kind ; and he may enjoy it isolated, without 
any other human being troubling himself about him. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 273 

A larger mass of varied and manifold enjoyments may certainly be 
found in England than it is possible to procure with us. Not in vain have 
wise institutions long prevailed here. What especially soothes and glad- 
dens the philanthropist is the spectacle of the superior comfort and more 
elevated condition in the scale of existence, universally prevailing. What 
with us are called luxuries, are here looked upon as necessaries, and are 
diffused over all classes. Hence arise, even in the smallest and most 
ordinary details, an endeavour after elegance, an elaborate finish and neat- 
ness ; in a word, a successful combination of the beautiful with the useful, 
which is entirely unknown to our lower classes. 

The distress, in truth, consisted in this; that the people, instead of 
having three or four meals a day, with tea, cold meat, bread and butter, 
beef-steaks or roast meat, were now obliged to content themselves with 
two, consisting only of meat and potatoes. It was, however, just harvest- 
time, and the want of labourers in the field so great, that the farmers gave 
almost any wages. Nevertheless, 1 was assured that the mechanics would 
rather destroy all the machinery and actually starve, than bring themselves 
to take a sickle in their hands, or bind a sheaf: so intractable and obstinate 
are the English common people rendered by their universal comfort, and 
the certainty of obtaining employment if they vigorously seek it. From 
what I have now told you, you may imagine what deductions you ought 
to make from newspaper articles. 

July 13tk. 
This morning I visited some of the public walks, which fell short of my 
expectations; and drank the waters, which have some resemblance to 
those of Carlsbad. I found them very heating. The doctors here say, 
as ours do, that they must be drunk early in the morning, or they lose a 
great part of their efficacy. The joke is, however, that here, early begins 
exactly where it ends with us, namely, at ten o'clock. 

The weather is unfortunately not favourable: cold and stormy, after a 
continuance of heat pretty long for England. For travelling, however, 
it is not bad; at least I find myself in far better spirits than in London, 
and am in great delight at the anticipation of the beautiful scenery of 
Wales, towards which I am now bending my course. 

I entreat you to be with me, at least in thought, and let our spirits 
journey together over sea and land, look down from the summits of moun- 
tains and enjoy the sweet repose of valleys; for I doubt not that spirits, in 
forms as infinitely various as infinity itself is boundless, rejoice, throughout 
all worlds, in the beauty of God's magnificent creation. 

I will first lead you to the seven sources of the Thames, which arises 
two or three miles from Cheltenham. I set out on this excursion in ' a 
Fly' (a kind of small landau, drawn by one horse), on the top of which I 
sat, that I might enjoy the beautiful prospect from the highest station. 

After a long ascent, you come to some solitary grassy hills; on the top 
of these, under the shade of two or three alders, is a little group of plashy 
springs, which trickle away, forming, as far as the eye can follow them, 
an insignificant brook. Such is the modest infancy of the proud Thames. 
I felt a tide of poetry come over my mind, as I thought, how, but a few 
hours ago, and but a few miles hence, I had seen these same waters 
covered with a thousand vessels; how this glorious stream, in its short 
course, bears on its bosom more ships, more treasures, and more human 
beings, than any of its colossal brethren; how the capital of the world lies 
on its banks, and by her omnipotent commerce may be almost said to rule 



274 LETTEKS ON ENGLAND, 

the four quarters of the globe. With reverential admiration I looked 
down on the gushing drops, and compared them, one while with Napo- 
leon, who, obscurely born in Ajaccio, in a few years made all the thrones 
of the earth tremble; — then with the avalanche, which, loosened from its 
bed under the foot of a sparrow, in five minutes buries a village; — then 
with Rothschild, whose father sold ribands, and without whose assistance 
no power in Europe is now able to carry on war. 

My driver, who was at the same time an accredited Cheltenham cice- 
rone, took me from this spot to a high hill called Lackington Hill, from 
which there is a celebrated view, with the appendage of a pleasant inn for 
the accommodation of visitors. Hidden under a bower of roses* my eye 
commanded an extent of seventy English miles; — a rich plain studded with 
towns and villages, among which the cathedral of Gloucester is the most 
striking and stately object. Behind it rose two ridges, the Malvern Hills 
and above them the Welsh mountains. Beautiful as was all around me, the 
distant blue mountains, bathed in air, awoke in me only an intense longing 
after home. How gladly should I have flown to your side with the aid of 
Fortunatus's cap ! 

Up to this time black clouds had chased each other across the heavens; 
just as I turned away from the prospect the sun provokingly broke forth : 
it lighted me through a beautiful beech-wood to the charming seat of Mr. 
Todd, who has built a smiling village in the midst of the leafy shade, con- 
sisting of straw-roofed cottages and pretty moss houses. In the centre of 
a green level turf stands a noble lime-tree, surrounded by three tiers of 
benches for as many generations. Not far distant, on the withered trunk 
of a tree, is a sun-dial, and on the edge of the hill overlooking the valley, 
a rural seat, sheltered by a little arched roof covered with heather, and its 
sides tastefully interwoven with roots. On holidays it is often covered with 
evergreens and flowers, and lighted at evening with gay lamps. In the 
neighbouring park, which has many distinguishing beauties, are the ruins of 
a Roman villa: they were accidentally discovered about eight years ago by 
the sudden sinking-in of a tree. Some baths are still in good preservation, 
as are also two tessellated floors; they are however of rather coarse work- 
manship, and bear no comparison with those discovered at Pompeii. The 
walls are in part covered with red and blue stucco, two inches thick, and 
the brick pipes for conveying heat are of a quality and durability now une- 
qualled. Ahout three quarters of a mile further on, the Roman road is 
distinctly to be traced, and a portion of it is indeed in actual use: it is to 
be distinguished from the English road chiefly by its running, like a north- 
German ' Chaussee,' in a perfectly straight line. It is to be hoped, how- 
ever, that the taste of the Romans was too good to allow them to enclose 
their roads between two endless rows of Lombardy poplars, and thus in- 
flict a twofold torture of monotony on the unfortunate traveller. How dif- 
ferent from an English road, which winds around the hills in soft and grace- 
ful sweeps, avoiding deep valleys or reverend trees, instead of following the 
one inveterate idea of a straight line, at a sixfold cost, through thick and 
thin, over hill and valley. 

On my return to Cheltenham, I passed through a large village, where I 
visited for the first time what is here called a tea-garden. The ingenuity 
with which a small space is made to contain a hundred little niches, bench- 
es, and picturesque, nay, often romantic seats, is quite extraordinary, and 

* It is one of the N greatest beauties of English landscape, that during the whole winter 
almost every house is adorned with the luxuriant blossoms and garlands of the monthly rose. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 275 

forms a curious contrast with the phlegm of the gaily dressed multitude 
who rather garnish than animate the scene. 

As it was rather early when I reached the town, I took advantage of the 
beautiful evening to visit more of the mineral waters, and 1 found that in 
the morning I had stumbled on the least important. These establishments 
are extremely splendid, ornamented with marble decorations, and still 
more with flowers, green-houses and pretty plantations. As soon as a thing 
is the fashion in England it becomes the subject of enormous speculation. 
This is to such a degree the case here, that the value of an acre of land in 
the neighbourhood of the town has risen within fifteen years from forty to 
a thousand guineas. The gardens and grounds which are destined to be 
places of public resort and amusement, are here, and 1 think rightly, laid 
out in a totally different style from the gardens and parks of private gen- 
tlemen. Broad and shady walks, and distinct open spaces, are rather to 
be aimed at, than picturesque views, or a large and landscape-like whole. 
Their manner of planting shady walks pleases me. A strip of ground 
about five feet wide, on each side of the way, is dug and thickly planted with 
a mixture of various trees and shrubs. The most flourishing trees are af- 
terwards left to grow, and the others are kept down by the shears as irreg- 
ular underwood. Between this and the top of the high trees the prospect 
is as it were set in a beautiful frame ; the whole is fuller and more luxuri- 
ant ; and wherever the country is uninteresting, it may be shut out by 
merely suffering the underwood to grow. 

Worcester, July \4tk. 

Yesterday, ' entre la poire et le fromage,' I received the twice-declined 
visit of the master of the ceremonies, — the gentleman who does the honour 
of the baths, and exercises a considerable authority over the company of 
an English watering-place, in virtue of which he welcomes strangers with 
most anti-English officiousness and pomposity, and manifests great care and 
zeal for their entertainment. An Englishman invested with such a cha- 
racter has mauvais jeu, and vividly recalls the ass in the fable, who tried to 
imitate the caresses of the lapdog. I could not get rid of my visitor till he 
had swallowed some bottles of claret with me, and devoured all the dessert 
the house afforded. At length he took his leave, first extorting from me a 
promise that I would honour the ball of the following evening with my pre- 
sence. However, I had so little inclination for company and new acquaint- 
ances, that I made ' faux bond,' and left Cheltenham early in the morning. 

The country continued most lovely, the near ground full of soft mea- 
dows and deep green clumps of trees ; the horizon bounded by the moun- 
tains, which at every mile grew in magnitude and distinctness of outline. 
At almost every stage I passed a considerable town, which was never 
without its towering Gothic church. The situation of Tewksbury struck 
me as peculiarly delightful. Nothing can be more tranquil, more pastoral ; 
and yet all these blooming plains were bloody battle-fields in the times of 
the countless civil wars of England, whence they retain the names, now so 
inappropriate, of Bloody Field, Field of Bones, &.c. 

Worcester, where I am now writing, the chief city of the county, has 
nothing remarkable except its magnificent cathedral ; the windows contain 
but small remains of ancient painted glass: to these, new has been added, 
which is very little inferior either in softness or brilliancy to the old. In 
the middle of the nave King John is buried : his effigy in stone reposes 
on the tomb; the oldest monument of an English king which Great Bri- 
tain contains. The tomb was opened some years ago, when the skeleton 



276 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

was found in good preservation, and in precisely the same dress as that 
represented in the statue: as soon as it came in contact with the air, the 
materials of which it was composed crumbled into dust ; the sword was 
entirely consumed by rust, and only its handle remained. 

Another very interesting monument is that cf a Templar, of the year 
1220, with this Norman inscription : " Ici gist syr guilleaume de harcourt 
fys robert de harcourf, et de Isabel de camvile." The figure of the knight 
(whose costume, by-the-by, is totally different from that of Count Briihl's 
Templar at Berlin*) is an admirable piece of sculpture, and reposes with 
an ease and 'abandon' which would do no discredit to antique art: his 
dress consists of boots or stockings (whichever you choose to call them) 
of mail, and golden spurs ; the knee is naked ; above the knee is again 
covered with mail, which so completely encloses the whole body, and even 
the head, that only the face is visible. Over this shirt of mail is a long red 
mantle, falling in folds below the calf; and over this a black baldrick, 
from which hangs a sword in a red scabbard : the left arm supports a nar- 
row pointed shield bearing the family arms, and not the cross of the Tem- 
ple. This is found only on the tomb. The whole figure is, as you per- 
ceive, painted; and the colours are from time to time renewed. 

As the greatest of all curiosities, strangers are shown Prince Arthur's 
tomb, the intricate stone tracery of which is really like the most exquisite 
carvings in wood or ivory. On one side of the chapel are fine rows of 
small figures, one above another. The order is as follows : on the lowest 
row the abbesses ; above them bishops ; above them kings ; then saints ; 
and at the top of all, angels. ' Quant a moi, qui ne suis encore ni saint, 
ni ange, souffrez que je vous quitte pour mon diner.' 

Llangollen, July 1 5th. 
'' If I had the honour to be the wandering Jew (who of course must have 
money ad libitum), I should most certainly spend the greatest part of my 
immortality on the high road, and specially in England. ' 'Tis so delight- 
ful' for a man of my opinions and character. In the first place, no human 
being troubles or constrains me. Wherever I pay well, I am the first per- 
son (always an agreeable feeling for the lordly sons of men), and meet 
with none but smiling faces and obliging people, full of zeal to serve me. 
Continued motion, without fatigue, keeps the body in health ; and the rapidly 
succeeding changes in beautiful, free nature have the same strengthening 
influence on the mind. I must confess that I am partly of Dr. Johnson's 
opinion: — he maintained that the greatest human felicity was to drive 
rapidly over an English road in a good postchaisc, with a pretty woman by 
one's side. 

It is one of the most agreeable sensations in the world to me to roll 
along in a comfortable carriage, and to stretch myself out at my ease while 
my eye feasts on the ever-changing pictures, like those of a magic lantern. 
As they pass, they awaken fancies serious and gay, tragic and comic ; and 
I find an intense pleasure in filling up the sketches thus presented to my 
eye. What strange fantastic shapes often start up with the rapidity of 
lightning, and flit before my mind like figures in the clouds! Then if my 
fancy droops her wings, I read and sleep in my carriage. I am little trou- 
bled with my baggage, which from long practice is so well arranged that 
I can get at every thing I want in a moment, without tormenting my ser- 

* Count Bri'ihl is inspector of Theatres at Berlin, and in virtue of that office exercises' 
surveillance. overtl>e costumes, on the correctness of which l>e piques himself. — Transl. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 277 

vants. Sometimes, when the weather is fine and the country beautiful, I 
walk for miles together : in short, I can desire no more perfect freedom 
than I enjoy here. Lastly, it is no slight pleasure that I can close the day 
by devoting a tranquil hour to conversing with the friend of my heart on 
all that has passed before me. 

But to return to my narrative. — I travelled all night, after witnessing an 
extraordinary sport of nature in the clouds. From the top of a hill I saw 
what appeared to me a gigantic range of black mountains, and at its foot 
a boundless lake : it was long before I could persuade myself that it was 
only an illusion, created by mist and cloud. The sky above was of an uni- 
form light grey ; upon it lay a coal-black mass of clouds thrown together 
in the form of the wildest mountains, the upper edge of which shaped itself 
into a bold and abrupt outline, while the lower was trans-sected by a hori- 
zontal line of mist. This wore the appearance of a boundless extent of 
silvery water ; and, as the green foreground of sunny wooded plains which 
lay beneath my feet was immediately bounded by it, the illusion was in- 
deed complete. As I descended the hill, step by step, the magic picture 
faded from before my eyes. 

The most beautiful reality, however, awaited me this morning in Wales. 
The vision of clouds seemed to have been the harbinger of the magnifi- 
cence of the vale of Llangollen, — a spot which, in my opinion, far surpasses 
all the beauties of the Rhine-land, and has, moreover, a character quite its 
own, from the unusual form of the peaked tops and rugged declivities of 
its mountains. The Dee, a rapid stream, winds through the green valley 
in a thousand fantastic bendings overhung with thick underwood. On 
each side, high mountains rise abruptly from the plain, and are crowned 
with antique ruins, modern country-houses, manufactories, whose towering 
chimneys send out columns of thick smoke, or with grotesque groups of 
upright rocks. The vegetation is every where rich, and hill and vale are 
filled with lofty trees, whose varied hues add so infinitely to the beauty and 
picturesque effect of a landscape. In the midst of this luxuriant nature, 
arises, with a grandeur heightened by contrast, a single long, black, bare 
range of mountains, clothed only with thick, dark heather, and from time 
to time skirting the high road. This magnificent road, which from Lon- 
don to Holyhead, a distance of two hundred miles,* is as even as a ' par- 
quet,' here runs along the side of the left range of mountains, at about 
their middle elevation and following all their windings ; so that in riding 
along at a brisk trot or gallop, the traveller is presented at every minute 
with a completely new prospect ; and without changing his position, over- 
looks the valley now before him, now behind, now at his side. On one 
side is an aqueduct of twenty-five slender arches, a work which would have 
done honour to Rome. Through this a second river is led over the valley 
and across the Dee, at an elevation of a hundred and twenty feet above 
the bed of the natural stream. A few miles further on, the little town of 
Llangollen offers a delightful resting-place, and is deservedly much resort- 
ed to. 

There is a beautiful view from the churchyard near the inn : here I 
climbed upon a tomb, and stood for half an hour enjoying with deep and 
grateful delight the beauties so richly spread before me. Immediately be- 
low me bloomed a terraced garden, filled with vine, honey-suckle, rose, 
and a hundred gay flowers, which descended to the very edge of the foam- 

* Where the contrary is not specified, the reader will understand English miles, four 
and a half of which go to a German milo. — Editor. 



278 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ing stream. On the right hand, my eye followed the crisped waves in their 
restless murmuring course through the overhanging thicket ; before mc 
rose two lines of wood, divided by a strip of meadow-land filled with grazing 
cattle ; and high above all, rose the bare conical peak of a mountain 
crowned by the ruins of the old Welsh castle Dinas Bran, or the Crow's 
Fortress. On the left, the stone houses of the town lie scattered along the 
valley ; the river forms a considerable waterfall near the picturesque 
bridge, while three colossal rocks rise immediately behind it like giant 
guards, and shut out all the more distant wonders of this enchanting re- 
gion. 

Permit me now to turn to some less refined and romantic, but not less 
real, enjoyments of sense — to my own room ; where my appetite, enor- 
mously sharpened by the mountain air, was most agreeably invited by the 
aspect of the smoking coffee, fresh guinea-fowls' eggs, deep yellow mountain 
butter, thick cream, * toasted muffins' (a delicate sort of cake eaten hot with 
butter), and lastly, two red spotted trout just caught ; all placed on a snow- 
white table-cloth of Irish damask; — a breakfast which Walter Scott's he- 
roes in ' the highlands' might have been thankful to receive at the hands of 
that great painter of human necessities. ' Je devore deja un ceuf.' — Adieu. 

Bangor. — Evening. 
The rain, which with short intervals accompanied me from London, 
remained constant to me to-day; but the weather seems now inclined to 
change for the better. I have all sorts of things to tell you, and a very 
interesting day to recount. Before J left Llangollen I recollected the 
two celebrated ladies who have inhabited this valley for more than half a 
century, and of whom I had heard once as a child, and again recently in 
London. You have doubtless heard your father talk of them, — ' si non 
voila leur historic ' Fifty-six years ago, two young, pretty and fashion- 
able ladies, Lady Eleanor Butler, and the daughter of the late Lord Pon- 
sonby, took it in their heads to hate men, to love only each other, and to 
live from that hour in some remote hermitage. The resolution was im- 
mediately executed; and from that time neither lady has ever passed a 
night out of their cottage. On the other hand, no one who is presentable 
travels in Wales unprovided with an introduction to them. It is affirmed 
that the ' scandal' of the great world interests them as much as when they 
lived in it; and that their curiosity to know what passes has preserved all 
its freshness. I had compliments to deliver to them from several ladies, 
but I had neglected to furnish myself with a letter. I therefore sent my 
card, determined if they declined my visit, as I was led to fear, to storm* 
the cottage. Here, as elsewhere, however, in England, a title easily 
opened the door, and I immediately received a gracious invitation to a 
second breakfast. Passing along a charming road, through a trim and 
pretty pleasure-ground, in a quarter of an hour I reached a small but 
tasteful Gothic cottage, situated directly opposite to Dinas Bran, various 
glimpses of which were visible through openings cut in the trees. I 
alighted, and was received at the door by the two ladies. Fortunately I 
was already prepared by hearsay for their peculiarities; I might otherwise 
have found it difficult to repress some expression of astonishment. Imagine 
two ladies, the eldest of whom, Lady Eleanor, a short robust woman, 
begins to feel her years a little, being now eighty-three; the other, a tall 
and imposing person, esteems herself still youthful, being only seventy- 
four. Both wore their still abundant hair combed straight back and pow- 
dered, a man's round hat, a man's cravat and waistcoat, but in the place 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 279 

of ' inexpressibles,'* a short petticoat and boots: the whole covered by a 
coat of blue cloth, of a cut quite peculiar, — a sort of middle term between 
a man's coat and a lady's riding-habit. Over this, Lady Eleanor wore, 
first, the grand cordon of the order of St. Louis across her shoulder; 
secondly, the same order around her neck; thirdly, the small cross of the 
same in her button-hole, and, ' pour comble de gloire,' a golden lily of 
nearly the natural size, as a star, — all, as she said, presents of the Bour- 
bon family. So far the whole effect was somewhat ludicrous. But now, 
you must imagine both ladies with that agreeable ' aisance,' that air of the 
world of the ' ancien regime,' courteous and entertaining, without the 
slightest affectation; speaking French as well as any Englishwoman of my 
acquaintance; and, above all, with that essentially polite, unconstrained, 
and simply cheerful manner of the good society of that day, which, in our 
serious hard-working age of business, appears to be going to utter decay. 
I was really affected with a melancholy sort of pleasure in contemplating 
it in the persons of the amiable old ladies, who are among the last of its 
living representatives; nor could I witness without lively sympathy the 
uninterrupted, natural and affectionate attention with which the younger 
treated her somewhat infirmer friend, and anticipated all her wants. The 
charm of such actions lies chiefly in the manner in which they are per- 
formed, — in things which appear small and insignificant, but which are 
never lost upon a susceptible heart. 

I began by saying that I esteemed myself fortunate in being permitted 
to deliver to the fair recluses the compliments with which I was charged 
by my grandfather, who had had the honour of visiting them fifty years 
ago. Their beauty indeed they had lost, but not their memory: they 
remembered the C — C— very well, immediately produced an old memo- 
rial of him, and only expressed their wonder that so young a man was 
dead already. Not only the venerable ladies, but their house, was full of 
interest; indeed it contained some real treasures. There is scarcely a 
remarkable person of the last half century who has not sent them a por- 
trait or some curiosity or antique as a token of remembrance. The col- 
lection of these, a well furnished library, a delightful situation, an equable, 
tranquil life, and perfect friendship and union, — these have been their 
possessions; and if we may judge by their robust old age and their cheer- 
ful temper, they have not chosen amiss. 

I had made my visit to them in a tremendous rain, which continued 
undiminished as I proceeded on my journey past the ruins of an abbey, 
and then by the palace of Owen Glendower, a personage whom you must 

remember from my Shaksperian readings at M . The variety of the 

scenery is extraordinary; sometimes you are hemmed in by a chaotic heap 
of mountains, of every form; in a few minutes you have so extensive a 
view before you that you could almost believe yourself in a level country; 
the scene shifts again, and you are in a road enclosed and overshadowed 
by wood. Further on, the stream turns a peaceful mill, and immediately 
after rushes foaming over masses of rock, and forms a magnificent 
waterfall. 

But the vale of Llangollen is only the proem to the true epopea, the 
high mountain district. After quitting the waterfall and riding for about 

* Inexpressibles is the name which this article of dress has received in England, 
where " in good society" a woman sometimes leaves her husband and children and run9 
off with her lover, but is always too decorous to be able to endure the sound of the word 
breeches. — Editor. 



280 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

half an hour through a nearly level country, all at once, a little beyond the 
inn at Cernioge Maur, you enter the holy of holies. Huge black rocks 
form a sublime amphitheatre, and their jagged and rent peaks seem to 
float in the clouds. Below, at a depth of eight hundred feet of perpendi- 
cular rock, the mountain torrent forces its difficult way, leaping headlong 
from chasm to chasm. Before me lay mountains rising one above ano- 
ther in endless perspective. I was so enchanted that I exclaimed aloud 
with delight. And in the midst of such scenery, it is impossible to say 
enough in praise of the road, which, avoiding every great inequality of 
surface, allows the traveller to enjoy at his ease all the ' belles horreurs' 
of this mountain region. Wherever it is not protected by the rocks, it is 
fenced by low walls ; at equal distances are niches neatly walled in, in 
which are deposited the stones for mending the roads : this has a much 
better effect than the open heaps by the sides of our roads. 

The mountain region of Wales has a very peculiar character, which it 
is difficult to compare with any other. Its height is about that of the 
Riesengebirg, but it is infinitely grander in form, richer in striking and 
picturesque grouped peaks. The vegetation is more varied in plants, 
though there is less wood, and it contains rivers and lakes, in which' the 
Riesengebirg is quite deficient. On the other hand, it wants the majestic 
impervious forests of the abode of Riibezahl ;* and in some places cul- 
tivation has already occupied the middle ground in a manner which would 
harmonize better with the beautiful than with the sublime. The road 
from Capel Cerig to within a few miles of Bangor is, however, wild and 
rugged as can be desired ; and broad masses of red and yellow heath 
flowers, ferns and other plants which do not bloom in our severe climate, 
clothe the rocks and replace the trees which do not flourish at such an 
elevation. But the most striking variety of the picture is produced by the 
strange, wild and colossal forms of the mountains themselves ; some of 
them are much more like clouds than solid masses. The peak of Trivaen 
is surmounted by such extraordinary basaltic pillars, that travellers can 
hardly be persuaded they are not men : they are only mountain spirits, 
keeping the everlasting station to which Merlin condemned them. 

I was struck with the good taste which had rendered all the houses along 
the high-road so perfectly in keeping with the scenery : they are built of 
rough stone of a reddish colour, roofed with slate, in a heavy, simple 
style of architecture, and enclosed by iron gates, the gratings of which are 
so disposed as to represent the intersecting rays of two suns. The post- 
boy pointed out to me the remains of a Druidical castle, into which, as 
my guide-book informed me, Caractacus retired after his defeat at Caer 
Caredoc. The Welsh language sounds like the cawing of rooks. Al- 
most all their names begin with C, pronounced with a guttural explosion 
which no foreign organs can imitate. The ruin is converted into two or 
three inhabited huts, nor are the boundaries of the original building even 
distinguishable. 

A more remarkable object is a rock a little further on, in the form of 
a bishop with crozier and mitre, as if he had just started from the caverns 
of the mountain to preach Christianity to the heathen. Whence comes 
it that when Nature plays these sportive tricks, the effect is almost always 
sublime ; when Art seeks to imitate them, it is invariably ludicrous ? 

A minor ' tormento' in this region is the multitude of children, who 
start up and vanish like gnomes : they pursue the carriage, begging with 

* A mountain spirit, See Muaaus's Poj uUu Tales. —Traill. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 281 

inconceivable pertinacity. Wearied by their importunity, I had made a 
positive determination not to give anything to any-body ; a single devia- 
tion from which rule insures your never being rid of them for a moment. 
However, one little girl vanquished all my resolutions by her perseverance : 
she ran at least a German mile, up hill and down dale, at a brisk trot, 
sometimes gaining upon me a little by a foot-path, but never losing 
sight of me for a minute. She ran by the side of the carriage, uttering 
the same incessant tone of plaintive lamentation, like the cry of a sea-mew, 
which at length became so intolerable to me that I surrendered, and pur- 
chased my deliverance from my untireable pursuer at the price of a shil- 
ling. The ill-boding tone had however taken such possession of my ear, 
that I could not get rid of it for the whole day. 

August 16th. 

I have slept admirably, and am now sitting at the window of an inn on 
the sea-shore, and enjoying the sight of the ships cutting the transparent 
waters in every direction. On the landward rises a castle built of black 
marble, surrounded by ancient oaks. 

As 1 am very comfortably housed, I shall make this inn my head-quar- 
ters, and begin my excursions by this castle. I found here, very unexpect- 
edly, an amusing countryman. You know the clever A — , who is so 

thin, and yet exhibits such magnificent calves, so elegantly dressed, and 
yet so frugal, so good-natured, and yet so sarcastic, so English, and yet so 
German. Well, this same A ate a second breakfast with me, with- 
out any visible diminution of appetite from the former one ; and in return, 

regaled me with the most diverting conversation. He came from S , 

concerning which he told me as follows. 

JEST AND EARNEST. 

You know, my dear friend, that in Vienna, every man who can eat a 
roast fowl, and (N.B.) pay for it, receives the title of Euer Gnaden (Your 

Grace.) In S ,* on the other hand, every man who has a whole coat 

is called, in dubio, Herr Rath (Counsellor ;) or still better, Herr Gcheimer 
Rath (Privy Counsellor.) They do not trouble themselves with the dis- 
tinctions between an actual and a nominal Rath, a half, (that is a pen- 
sioned,) or a whole, (that is a full-payed,) and a payless Rath, a titular 
nullity^ The attributes and functions of this mysterious Counsellorship 
are wonderfully various. In the first place comes the invalid statesman 
in the Residenz, who, from respect for his declining years, and as a re- 
ward for living over half a century, has been invested with the yellow 
griffin ; or a provincial chief president, more remarkable for his prepos- 
sessions in his own behalf, than for his public labours, whom his services 
on occasion of the visit of some foreign sovereign have raised to honours 
and to orders. Here we find the vigorous prop of the finances, or that 
*rara avis,' a man of influence near the throne, yet as full of modesty as 
of merit : there a vegetating Excellenz, who knows no other occupation 
than that of going from house to house dishing up antiquated jokes and 
jeux de mots, which for half a century have enjoyed the uninterrupted 
privilege of delighting ' la creme de la bonnie societe' in the capital. Next 
we see it in the person of one who is equally delightful as man and as 
poet, and who has never trodden any but the straight forward path. A 
little further we recognize it in the form of a less brilliant but more com- 

* By S , the author apparently means Berlin. — Trans. 

36 



282 LETTEUS ON ENGLAND, 

prehensive genius, which, although consecrated to Themis, has an acute 
eye for the glories of the theatrical, as well as the celestial stars. This 
Proteus then transforms itself into a Cameralist, celebrated for his breed 
of sheep and his political economy, who manures his fields ; — then into a 
physician, who performs a similar good office on the churchyard. It is 
also to be found in the invincible Landwehr ; nay even the post,* the lot- 
tery, &c, cannot exist without it. The court-philosopher, and court- 
theologian, all shake hands as Geheime Rathe; for so they are, have been, 
or shall be hereafter : in short, no nation under the sun is more richly 
provided with counsel, and truly of the most privy kind ; for such is the 
modesty of these countless counsellors, that many of them keep their tal- 
ents buried in the most profound secrecy. 

It is, however, a real pleasure to see with what unconstrained and 
touching ' bonhommie' they bandy titles and compliments, every one ex- 
alting the other, and awaiting in return a grateful reciprocity of good 
offices. 

The various adjuncts and applications of the poor word geboren (born) 
must doubtless for ever remain a mystical enigma to all foreigners who 
endeavour to acquire the German language. Without plunging deeper 
into this labyrinth, I will only mention for their information, that with us 
the meanest beggar will no longer condescend to be merely geboren; that 
Edelgeboren] (nobly born) begins to be a sensible affront to the lower 
order of official persons ; and Wohlgeboren (well born) no less so to the 
higher, but not noble functionaries. For my part, I am very careful to 
write to my tailor, " Hochwohlgeborner Herr" (High-well-born Sir.) He 
was moreover a very distinguished man, a descendant of our old friend 
Robinson Crusoe, who has attained to historic importance by the daring 
and inimitable cut. of uniforms: he was therefore deserving, at the least, 
of an order of merit.f 

That no restraint may be imposed on this arbitrary distribution and as- 
sumption of titles, matters are so favourably arranged, that with all this 
avidity for rank, there exists no real and fixed order of rank, either deter- 
mined by the court, or by birth, or grounded on opinion and custom, so 
general and rooted in the nation as to have nearly the force of law. Some- 
times it is birth, oftener place ; sometimes merit, sometimes favour, some- 
times irresistible impudence which seizes precedence wherever accident or 
circumstances offer it. This gives occasion to many strange anomalies, 
which an old nobleman like myself, a Baron von Tunderdendronk, " qui 

ne sauroit compter le nombre de ses anes," as general P said, cannot 

understand. Complaints, affronts, and anxieties are therefore endless in 
society. There is only a certain lively and excellent old lady, who has the 
sole and proper art of maintaining the first place almost everywhere, and 
under all circumstances. She unites great talents with remarkable bodily 
strength and bravery; and by means of these mingled advantages, some- 
times by wit, sometimes by unimaginable rudeness ; sometimes, when no- 
thing else will do, by a hearty push, she takes and maintains precedency 
at court and on all gala occasions. I know from good authority that 
Countess Kackelack, atone of our courts (for you know we have many,) 

* In every nation the post ought to be extra-post. Many people indeed regret that 
the greater part of the State-machine is not driven by it. This might give it a jog, and 
put an end to the halt which it has made for half a century.^EDiTOR. 

t The English reader must be told, what to him will sound strangely enough, that 
" Wohlgeboren" is .a higher title than "Edelgeboren." — Translator. 

t I am acquainted with other qualities of this « artiste,' which would do honour to 
many of the • industriel' noblemen of our time. For instance, he sends in his bill only 
once in five year?, and is the most magnanimous of creditors. • Avis aux lecteurs.' 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 283 

felt herself slighted and aggrieved by a certain court party, and by the ad- 
vice of her friend the Starost von Piickling addreised a petition directly to 
our upright and equitable ruler, praying that her place might, be officially 
determined. It was allotted immediately after that of the Princess Bona, 
who (for once, on account of the services of her late husband,) is in pos- 
session of the first. The Grtmd-M.BLnhn\(Gro88wurdentragert t Grand-dig - 
nity-bearer) Prince Weise, brought her the order, and added, " But, my 
dear Countess, you must yield precedence to Baroness Stolz, for with your 
slender person what can you do against her? A single blow from her el- 
bow lames you for ever. Do therefore let her go first; for you know even 
the police is afraid of her since the famous challenge she put forth some 
years ago." 

Everything must yield to force ; and this shows how difficult it is to se- 
cure precedence to mere merit without universal and declared rules : — 
merit is so relative. If a minister or a general is a great man, — who can 
deny that the best of cooks, the loveliest of opera-dancers, has great merit? 
merit which, as history teaches us, monarchs and states have recognized 
and honoured. 

In England, where antiquity of title gives precedence (be it remarked, 
by-the-bye, the safest and best adapted to a monarchy,*) the great Field 
Marshal and Prime Minister Wellington must yield precedence to the little 
Duke of St. Albans, (who is known, indeed, but not very illustrious,) be- 
cause the latter is an older Duke ; that is to say, the services of his pro- 
genitress Nell Ciwynn, an actress and mistress of Charles II., are of more 
ancient date than those of the Duke of Wellington, and consequently 
entitle her descendants to all the rights of precedence over the great 
general. 

In our capital it is otherwise. We are generally too well accustomed 
to bad eating to estimate very highly the merits of a good cook, and are 
of late universally become so virtuous that nobody has a mistress. As to 
rewarding merit, that is a thing which does not often come under con- 
templation, f 

What really and mainly gives rank and consideration here, is to be a ser- 
vant of the state or of the court, 'n'importe lequel et comment.' ** Beati 
possidentes." The good old German proverb applies here, "When God 
gives a place, he gives brains to fill it." The Bureaucracy has taken the 
place of the Aristocracy, and will perhaps soon become equally hereditary. 
Even now the Government itself cannot dismiss any of its 'employees' with- 
out regular trial and judgment: every man regards his place as his most 
stable property, and it is not to be wondered at that place-holders laud 
this state of things to the skies. Strange, that nevertheless all states which 
have a free constitution, — all in which it is a recognized principle that the 
nation, and not any privileged class — not even that of its official servants 
— is the main object, — follow a totally opposite system. J 

* N. B. When the nobility is fitly constituted ; that is to say, when it is a true national 
nobility, such aa England in part possesses, or such as Grave II well describes in his 
" Regent." — Editor. 

t My departed friend doubtless means to apply, this to a reitain class of functionaries, 
who, lor good reasons, love nothing so well as mediocrity ; forif I guess the scene alight, 
no where is merit more nobly honoured in the highest places. Of this the whole nation 
recently saw a most gratifying example in the affectionate respect paid to a reveted 
statesman, whose merits are as exalted as his station. If there is a man who doubts of 
the former, it can be no other than himself. — Editor. 

X If I were not certain that my Iriend wrote this passage in the year 1827, I should 
take it to be a reminiscence of President Jackson's first speech. The President pro- 
poses that all the public officers of the United States (with very few exceptions) be 
changed every filth year. " Eheu jam satis!" What would our llegiirungs liuthc 



284 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

The middle classes are, in another way, happy in their disregarded 
state: they enjoy their competence ' con amore,' and, as the salt of life, 
they indulge themselves now and then with a lawsuit, for which the min- 
isters of justice afford them every possible facility. The merchant, 
whether Christian or prae-Christian, finds his account in this, and, if he 
knows how to come at it, useful patronage. Indeed to have a great deal 
of money is almost as good as to be a wirklicher Geheimerath (actual 
privy counsellor) :* and rich bankers, who keep a good house, are reck- 
oned among the privileged classes, and not unfrequently for these high 
deserts elevated to nobility. 

In this manner, all manage to get something ; the unfortunate nobles, 
especially those of ancient date, are the only people with whom it goes 
hard. Without money, without any land of which he has the free dispo- 
sal, his titles affording an example of infinite multiplication, and his here- 
ditary estates of infinite division, without any share in the legislation, long 
stripped of his ancient endowments and benefices,! unnecessarily and un- 
fairly annoyed by the authorities, his ill-supported claims often bringing 
upon him not only ridicule and contempt, but hostility and persecution, 
the nobleman has, as member of a Corporation, lost all dignity and im- 
portance in the eyes of the people, and he retains scarcely any other dis- 
tinction than that of serving as the only stuff out of which to make cham- 
berlains and lords in waiting, in the respective courts of the capital ;•— 
doubtless always a most enviable lot. 

This last truth is duly known to many ; and a great deal of talent has 
been displayed thereupon by a celebrated authoress, who was some time 
ago engaged in a sort of amicable rivalry with her husband on the field 
of romance, — a contest which used to produce two or three works of 
that nature, consisting of as many volumes each, every Leipsig fair, to the 
great joy of the public. The most extraordinary part of the story is, that 
the works of the husband were characterized by the overflowing tender- 
ness of a female pen; those of the wife, on the contrary, by a somewhat 
unwieldy quantity of masculine knowledge, a lead which even the alche- 
mical hand of an amiable and accomplished prince could not turn to gold. 
The works of both, especially the former, have outlived thejr vogue ; and 
the graceful and child-like simplicity of the Northern heroes, who tilted 
at each other with tenderness, looked on their slain friend with clear blue 
eyes, and imprinted upon his lips the kiss of peace ; nay, even their won- 
drous steeds, who galloped over precipitous crags and swam after their 
lords through seas, have been forced, spite of all their marvellous gifts, to 
give way to Walter Scott's unbreeched Highlanders. 

The poetical young lords of the chamber, and the learned tea-parties 
of the noble lady, had long before been deserted as somewhat insipid. 
In such a tea-party did Ahasuerus, (as we read in the memoirs of the 
Devil,) after his long and restless wanderings, first find repose, and sink 

(Government counsellors) say to such a scheme? Entire general commissions broken up, 
in the fullest sense of the word, at a blow! For who knows whether, at the end of five 
years, they would be thought worth the money they cost, and renewed at all? — Editor. 

* Privy counsellors who have any functions, are distinguished from those who have 
none, by the addition to their title ot'wirklicher (real, actual). — Transl. 

| The intention of this law was noble and liberal, though it cut the knot rather rough- 
ly. But how has it been executed ? A book might be written, ought to be written, on 
this subject. The execution of this business is precisely in the style of a certain Herr 
von Wanze, who, in the disguise of a farmer, taught the opulent peasant Pharao at Kir- 
messe.* " You put down your money," said he, " and I deal the cards right and left. 
Whnt falls to the left I win ; what falls to the right you lose." — Editor. 

\ village festival, — Trans!. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 285 

into a refreshing sleep. Since that time, the thick volumes of the dis- 
tinguished authoress have dwindled to small tales, — pretty ephemera, — 
which live but a day indeed, but are well requited by the honour of cir- 
culating exclusively in courts and antechambers, among princes, ladies in 
waiting, and maids of honour, lords of the chamber, equerries and grooms 
of the chambers (for nothing within the precinct of a court is to be treated 
lightly). Haunted rooms were lately introduced, but the ghosts were so 
dull and fades, so like white-washed boards, ' avec un bel air de famille,' 
that the utmost they could do was to make one think of a cold shudder, 
never to excite one. The most piquant of all these stories was unques- 
tionably that which * persiffloit' the society of the capital, in which poor 
Viola played a very suspicious part, and a fashionable lady was introduced, 
who sold her for a large sum to an illustrious person. This story was 
justly called moral: for it excited in every person of good feeling, who 
read it, detestation of calumny and of hasty condemnations. The ill- 
natured, however, were delighted with it for other reasons ; and so in one 
way or other it was not without value. It might fairly be called a mas- 
ter-piece when compared with the " Tales of the middle ages," full of vir- 
tue and distress, of Christianity and indecency, of Italianism and German- 
ism, which the necessities of journal and almanack literature call into ex- 
istence by myriads, and of which we may say with Schiller, " When peo- 
ple are gorged with vice, set virtue on the table."* These do not reach 
either the one or the other ; but, from the beginning to the end, one suf- 
fers the moral ' pendant' of a so-called medical cure by nausea. After 
enduring all sorts of allusions, the whole thing burns in the pan, and so 
far from being fit to bring to table, the unfortunate reader is for a long 
time disgusted with all food whatsoever.* 

But to return to the learned and amiable lady, of whom we were just 
speaking. At the time I was in those regions, a strange swarm of insects 
sported in the wintry sun of her courtly and literary celebrity, ycelped in 
the great world a coterie, which, I believe, establishes it as a principle 
(who has not principles now-a-days?), that nobles have really and truly a 
different sort of blood in their veins from that of other men ; and that if a 
common tree can be ennobled at all, it can be only by the process of 
grafting ; for instance, by the insertion of some illegitimate scion of a no- 
ble stock. They teach that this nobility should remain, before all things, 
pure and distinct ; it must dishonour itself neither by trade nor by any 
speculations of public utility, which latter offence has lately been de- 
nounced as the cause of the decay of the nobility of the land by a certain 
Frau von Tonne in a very voluminous work. To dabble a little in au- 
thorship and artistship is lawful (even for money, nay for burghers' mo- 
ney,) seeing that artistst occupy a sort of middle region between the no- 
ble and the bourgeois. A constitutional high nobility and a representa- 
tive government are by no means to the taste of this party ; from the very 
natural reason that under any such terrible system, men, the date of 

* It is but fair, however, to say that the exceptions to this description are many. 
When for instance Gbthe does not disdain to send forth " a.man of forty" among the 
minors; when Tieck takes pity upon us, and gives us areal genuine " Novelle;" when 
L. Shefer moves our heart and spirit by his wild lightnings ; Kruse makes a criminal 
trial graceful and attractive; or some Therese, Friederike, &c. discloses the otherwise 
impenetrable mysteries of the female heart (not to mention the varied merits of our 
other best tale-writers); — it is evident that there are workmen who could supply excel- 
lent and perfect wares if the whole manufacture were not spoiled by the established ma- 
chinery. — Editor. 

t It is only in English that the word artist is absurdly restricted to painters, sculp- 
tors, and engravers. An artist is, in the" German sense, a man who cultivates the fine 
arts, — poetiy, painting, music, &c. — Transl. 



286 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

whose nobility is known to nobody but themselves, and whose encumbered 
estates are split up into portions of microscopic invisibility, would be con- 
demned to the horror of being compelled to take their seat in the Cham- 
ber of Commons (where else ?). Who can blame them, therefore, under 
circumstances, for preferring the chambers of princes, especially if they 
can lord it there ? Which Heaven forfend ! It is to be hoped they will re- 
main merely titular, and not actual privy counsellors and lords of the bed- 
chamber. 

Evening. 

I could bear no longer to sit still in my room, while the castle opposite 

to my windows tempted me forth. As soon therefore as A had taken 

his departure, I procured a mountain pony and rode out in high spirits. 
This remarkable edifice was built by the proprietor of the slate quarries, 
situated about three miles distant, which bring him a yearly income of 
40,000Z. He has laid out a part in the most delightful situation on the 
sea-shore ; and has pursued the strange but admirably executed idea of 
erecting every building within its enclosure in the old Saxon style of archi- 
tecture. The English falsely ascribe the introduction of this style to the 
Anglo-Saxons : it arose in the time of the emperors of Saxon line ; and 
it is quite certain that none of the numerous Saxon remains are to be 
traced to an earlier date. The high wall, which surrounds the park in a 
circuit of at least a German mile, has a very singular appearance ; pointed 
masses of slate three or four feet high, and of irregular shape, are built 
upright into the top of the wall. At every entrance a fortress-like gate 
with a portcullis frowns on the intruder, — no inapt symbol, by-the-bye, of 
the illiberality of the present race of Englishmen, who shut their parks 
and gardens more closely than we do our sitting-rooms. The favoured 
visitor must then cross a drawbridge before he passes the gate-way of the 
imposing castle. The black marble of the island of Anglesea, rudely 
hewn, harmonizes admirably with the majestic character of the surround- 
ing scenery. The pure Saxon style is preserved in the minutest details, 
even in the servants' rooms and meanest parts of the building. In the 
eating-hall I found an imitation of the castle of William the Conqueror, 
at Rochester, which I formerly described to you. What could then be 
accomplished only by a mighty monarch, is now executed, as a plaything, 
— only with increased size, magnificence and expense, — by a simple coun- 
try-gentleman, whose father very likely sold cheeses. So do times change ! 

The ground-plan of the building, which the architect had the politeness 
to show me, gave occasion to certain domestic details, which I am glad 
to be able to communicate to you ; because nearly all large English country- 
houses are constructed on the same plan j and because in this, as in many 
other things, the nice perception of the useful and commodious, the ex- 
quisite adaptation of means to ends, which distinguish the English, are 
conspicuous. The servants never wait in the ante-room, — here called the 
hall, — which, like the overture of an opera, is designed to express the cha- 
racter of the whole : it is generally decorated with statues or pictures, and, 
like the elegant staircase and the various apartments, is appropriated to 
the use of the family and guests, who have the good taste rather to wait 
on themselves than to have an attendant spirit always at their heels. The 
servants live in a large room in a remote part of the house, generally on 
the ground-floor, where all, male and female, eat together, and where the 
bells of the whole house are placed. They are suspended in a row on the 
wall, numbered so that it is immediately seen in what room any one has 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 287 

rung: a sort of pendulum* is attached to each, which continues to vibrate 
for ten minutes after the sound has ceased to remind the sluggish of their 
duty. The females of the establishment have also a large common room, 
in which, when they have nothing else to do, they sew, knit, and spin : 
close to this is a closet for washing the glass and china which comes within 
their province. Each of them, as well as of the men-servants, has her 
separate bed-chamber in the highest story. Only the ' housekeeper' and 
the ' butler' have distinct apartments below. Immediately adjoining that 
of the housekeeper, is a room where coffee is made, and the store-room 
containing every thing requisite for breakfast, which important meal, in En- 
gland, belonjrs.especially to her department. On the other side of the build- 
ing is the washing establishment, with a small court-yard attached ; it con- 
sists of three rooms, the first for washing, the second for ironing, the third, 
which is considerably loftier, and heated by steam, for drying the linen in 
bad weather. Near the butler's room is his pantry, a spacious fire-proof 
room, with closets on every side for the reception of the plate which he 
cleans here, and the glass and china used at dinner, which must be deliv- 
ered back into his custody as soon as it is washed by the women. All 
these arrangements are executed with the greatest punctuality. A locked 
staircase leads from the pantry into the beer and wine cellar, which is 
likewise under the butler's jurisdiction. 

I followed a very romantic road, which led me through the park, and then 
along the bank of a beautifully wooded mountain stream, and in about an 
hour arrived at the slate quarry, which lies in the midst of the mountains, 
six miles from the castle. From what I have already told you, you may 
imagine what a vast work this is. Five or six high terraces of great-extent 
rise one above another on the side of the mountain; along these swarm 
men, machines, trains of a hundred wagons attached together and rolling 
rapidly along the iron railways, cranes drawing up heavy loads, water courses, 
&c. It took me a considerable time to give even a hasty glance at this 
busy and complicated scene. In order to reach a remote part of the 
works, where they were then blasting rocks with gunpowder, — a process 
which I had a great desire to see, — I was obliged to lie down in one of 
the little iron wagons which serve for the conveyance of the slate, and are 
drawn by means of a windlass through a gallery hewn in the solid rock, 
only four feet in height, four hundred paces in length, and pitch dark. 
It is a most disagreeable sensation to be dragged through this narrow 
passage at full speed, and in Egyptian darkness, after having had ample 
opportunity of seeing at the entrance the thousand abrupt jagged projec- 
tions by which one is surrounded. Few strangers make the experiment, 
spite of the tranquillizing assurances of the guide who rides before. It is 
impossible to get rid of the idea that if one came in contact with any of 
these salient points, one would, in all probability, make one's egress with- 
out a head. After passing through this gallery, I had to walk along a 
path at the edge of the precipice, only two feet wide, and without any 
railing or defence; then to pass through a second low cavern, when I 
reached the fearfully magnificent scene of operations. 

It was like a subterranean world ! Above the blasted walls of slate, 
smooth as a mirror, and several hundred feet high, scarcely enough of the 
blue heaven was visible to enable me to distinguish mid-day from twilight. 
The earth on which we stood was likewise blasted rock; just in the middle 
was a deep cleft six or eight feet wide. Some children of the workmen 
were amusing themselves in leaping across this chasm, for the sake of 

* This pendulum may be used by acute servants as a sort of thenno- or hygro- 
meter of the patience of their respective masters and mistresses. — Editor. 



288 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

earning a few pence. The perpendicular sides were hung with men, who 
looked like dark birds, striking the rock with their long picks, and throw- 
ing down masses of slate which fell with a sharp and clattering sound. 
But on a sudden the whole mountain seemed to totter, loud cries of 
warning re-echoed from various points, — the mine was sprung. A large 
mass of rock loosened itself slowly and majestically from above, fell down 
with a mighty plunge, and while dust and splinters darkened the air like 
smoke, the thunder rang around in wild echoes. These operations, wh>h 
are of almost daily necessity in one part or other of the quarry, are so 
dangerous, that, according to the statement of the overseer himself, they 
calculate on an average of one hundred and fifty men wounded, and seven 
or eight killed in a year. An hospital, exclusively devoted to the workmen 
on this property, receives the wounded; and on my way I had met, without 
being aware of it, the body of one who had fallen the day before yester- 
day; ' car e'est comme un champ de bataille.' The people who escorted 
it were so smartly dressed and so decorated with flowers, that I at first 
took the procession for a wedding, and was shocked when, in answer 
to my inquiry for the bridegroom, one of the attendants pointed in silence 
to the coffin which followed at some distance. The overseer assured me 
that half these accidents were owing to the indifference of the men, 
who are too careless to remove in time and to a sufficient distance, 
though at every explosion they have full warning given them. The slate 
invariably splits in sharp-edged flakes, so that an inconsiderable piece 
thrown to a great distance, is often sufficient to cut a man's hand, leg, or 
even head, clean off. On one occasion, this last, as I was assured, 
actually happened. 

As we ourselves were not far enough from the ' foyer,' I instantly obeyed 
the signal, and turned on the left through the infernal gallery, to inspect 
the more peaceful operations : these are extremely varied and interesting. 
Paper cannot be cut more neatly and rapidly than slates are here ; and 
no deal board can split more easily and delicately than the blocks which 
the workmen with one single stroke of the mallet divide into slices, from 
three to four feet in breadth, as thin as the thinnest pasteboard. The 
rough blocks come from the region I have just described, down Parisian 
' montagnes russes' to the stone-hewer ; and, as in those, the downward 
impetus of the loaded wagons sends them up again when empty. The 
iron railways are not here, as they commonly are, concave, but convex, 
and the wagon wheels correspond. 

July 11th. 
The day has passed in rest, writing, and reading ; so that it affords few 
Materials. But before I go to bed I must indulge the delightful habit of 
chatting with you. I was just thinking of home, and our honoured friend 
L , who is now travelling, and has sent me a whole volume of his for- 
mer lucubrations. Shall I send you a specimen ? Listen then. 

" REFLECTIONS OP A PIOUS SOUL OF SANDOMIR, OR SANDOMICH.* 

" ( I. On occasion of the quantity of Schnapps drunk at my expense by 
the Saxon postillions. 

" How much better is our country in all respects than any other ! 

* The inhabitants themselves cannot perfectly decide which termination is the right.f 

f This is a joke which will be understood only by those who are acquainted with the 
peculiarities of the Berlin dialect. The inhabitants continually confound verbs which 
govern the dative mir (to me,) with those which require the accusative mich (me) ; fot 
which they are much laughed at by the rest of Germany. The first syllable of course al- 
ludes to the sandy plain in which Berlin stands. — Transl. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 289 

Really one witnesses strange things ! For instance, it is certainly an extra- 
ordinary circumstance, — and yet after repeated experience I cannot doubt it, 
—that when the horses liere are tired and lazy, (which, alas ! is too often the 
case,) the postilion has only to drink Schnapps, to render them brisk 
and active. The wisdom of Nature and her hidden powers are unfathom- 
able ! The above-mentioned phenomenon may perhaps be elucidated 
by the well-known fact, that wine begins to ferment in the cask when the 
vine blossoms.* At the last stage before Torgau, my companion Count 

S , Lieutenant of the Guards, from Potsdam, upon whom the light of 

Grace hath not yet broken, and who consequently is unduly moved by 
worldly things, was so angry with the postilion that he shook his stick at 
him, and called him a Saxon dog. ' O Lord ! no, sir,' answered the fel- 
low stupidly ; * there you're mistaken — we have been Prussian dogs these 
ten years and more.' This is a plain' proof that the people here are en- 
tirely destitute of that high civilization which prevails among us. 

" 2. After my signal deliverance on the 6th of July, 1827. 

"For four weeks I have not been able to write! With thankfulness 
and deep inward feeling I now take up my pen for the first time, to set 
forth the wonderful dispensation 1 have experienced. As I was travelling 
to M last month, I was overturned directly before the door of the toll- 
house, and broke my right arm. My first exclamation — I confess it to my 
shame — was a shocking curse : but my second, thanks, fervent thanks to 
the Creator that I had broken my arm and not my neck. In such events 
we clearly perceive the ' unfathomable ways' and the protecting arm of 
Providence, which is ever at hand to help us at the moment of need. Did 
not my life hang upon a hair ? and was it not the Lord's pleasure herein 
to give me an impressive proof that it depends on him alone to close my 
eyes for ever, or still to preserve my young life, which perhaps (for what 
is impossible to him ?) is reserved for great and weighty things ? Yes, ye 
philosophers, with heartfelt joy and triumph do [ feel it, Faith alone makes 
us happy. 

" 3. On occasion of my being nearly drowned in the Elbe, near Torgau. 

" Certain it is that we ought not to venture into the water till we can 
swim, as a Grecian sage hath very justly remarked. I was so imprudent 
as to bathe yesterday without having acquired this art, for I ever kept my- 
self far aloof from all revolutionary gymnastics and exercises of that sort,) 
and being seized with a cramp in the calf of my leg, and consequently 
somewhat frightened, I should perhaps now be among the dead, had it 
not been for a man whom Heaven led in this direction, exactly at this 
time, for my preservation. Can I be blind at such repeated proofs of spe- 
cial interposition in my favour ? The whole Elbe is, nevertheless, become 
rather disagreeable to me. I strive with this as a blameable feeling, since 
we ought to recollect how useful this river is to many of our fellow-crea- 
tures.t The remark has I believe been made before, but it nevertheless is 
not the less worthy of attention — that wherever we find a large city, we al- 
most invariably find a great river by the side of it ; — but so wisely, so gra- 
ciously has a kind Providence arranged all things for our good, though we 
men acknowledge it but too seldom ! Yes, Nature, like a good mother, has 
taken care for all. To the bee she gave her sting, to the beaver his tail, 
to the lion his strength, to the ass patience ,- but to man his lofty under- 

* N. B. Not to forget to ask our learned Professor Blindemann what he thinks of 
this interpretation. 

t Among others, to the Commissioners of the Elbe Navigation, who have just made 
such a noble end of their labours, and have all received Orders for the same. I wonder 
whether Providence also will bestow an Order on me? 

37 



290 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

standing, and — on subjects which this, with our deceitful reason, cannot 
reach — divine revelations. O how thankful do I always feel when I think 
rightly on this ! I, who moreover have so much more cause than num- 
bers of my brethren to be thankful for the manifold bodily and mental 
advantages I enjoy. May I never forget them ! — Amen. 

" 4. On occasion of my being forced to pay Abraham the Jew my 
twice prolonged bill, with ' alterum tanturn. ' 

" I have been sorely disquieted by the doubt, whether the Jews are 
really to remain to the end of the world ; and, in spite of the curse which 
lies upon them, scattered and oppressed as they are on earth, to continue 
for ever to cheat us so astonishingly as they do. 

" Yet is not this very doubt a sin ? since we are assured in many holy 
books that this will certainly be the case. Besides, the conversion of these 
misguided wretches is now proceeding from our country, whence the 
greatest light formerly went forth. But alas ! here a new fearful doubt 
besets me : Will all the inhabitants of the earth ever be called Christians? 
It is indeed so declared : but in the course of my learned studies I lately 
met with a calculation which, to my horror, showed me that out of eight 
hundred millions of souls on the earth, only two hundred millions are called 
by the true name. Let us hope, however, that the worthy and admirable 
Bible Societies will do their part, and not weary. The English cannot 
be truly in earnest in this matter, seeing that as yet they have hardly made 
a convert in India. It is probable that they, as usual, have only political 
ends in view.* I read lately that a Hindoo audaciously answered a mis- 

* To add a word in earnest: I would ask, who does not honour the humane motives 
which gave rise to the Bible and Missionary societies? But are these, even were they 
not subject, as unfortunately too ofien happens, to the most scandalous abuses, the right 
means to the end ? The result in almost every case teaches us the direct contrary. It 
ought to be considered that God sent Christianity as the second covenant ; the first 
.was based entirely upon earthly interests and despotic power. 

If I did not fear to appear to treat the matter too lightly, I should almost be inclined 
to say that we ought to begin by converting savages into Jews, before we attempt to 
make them Christians. This would also harmonize in a peculiar way with that powerful 
lever, commercial interest. Men would be civilized much more quickly by the business 
of buying and selling, than by Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians. 

This might also serve as an index or guide ; and the conformity of such a course with 
the laws of nature would be proved by repeated experience, wherever the same process 
were to be gone through. To try to make men Christians who are in so low a state of 
civilization as the almost merely animal inhabitants of parts of Africa, appears to me 
nearly as unreasonable as to send teachers of the European languages to the apes. To 
this stage of human culture two things are applicable, self-interest, and force benefi- 
cently employed : and in this point of view, even conversions by the sword are not so 
injudicious and absurd as those by Bible Societies; always provided, that they are 
accomplished without unnecessary cruelty, and undertaken from truly benevolent mo- 
tives.! (It is assumed, be it observed, that we have a vocation and a right to endeavour 
to raise people to our state of civilization without any will of theirs ; but this we shall 
not discuss here.) 

The other method, namely, lo work upon savages by their own present and obvious 
intetest, can be accomplished only by trade, and appears to be the most just and mild of 
all ; but it must also be accompanied by a certain degree of compulsion and constraint, 
to produce any rapid and permanent results. The worst effect of the attempts to hasten 
on the universality of Christianity is doubtless this ; that as soon as the savage comes 
in collision with Christians, they must perceive that the latter, — whether governments, 
corporations, or individuals — while they preach benevolence, do in fact, in almost every 
case, act hostilely both to sach other and to them. Their simple understandings, which 
ate not rectified by higher culture, can in no way reconcile (his contradiction. And as 
they, like children, take in little of a new faith but the mythos, it is not much to be won- 

f It cannot be denied that the most efficient attempts at conversion, and those which 
left the most permanent consequences, were those of Charlemagne, and of the Spaniards 
in South America. It was only a pity that the Spaniards forced their own idolatry upon 
men who were, in fact, better Christiana than themselves. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 291 

sionary who was trying to convert him, 'I shall not suffer myself to be 
converted to Christianity by you, till you consent to be converted to 
the religion of Brama by me. I believe in the truth of my religion, as you 
believe in the truth of yours ; and what is right for one, is fair for the 
other. Some fables and abuses may perhaps have crept into both, but 
they are of the same family.' What dreadful views ! I myself, who, — I 
say it without vain-glory, — persuaded an old Jew, whose trade had fallen 
off, to be baptized, (for which I still allow him a pension,) sought also to 
contribute my mite by the spiritual change of a real Indian, who after 
many wonderful adventures had been driven into our hyperborean regions, 
where the Herrnhuters had long, though vainly, laboured at his conversion. 
He heard me very patiently ; and, to say the truth, I was so carried away 
by the momentous nature of the circumstance, that 1 wondered at my 
own eloquence. But what was the result ? he smiled at me, took my gift, 
shook his head like a Chinese idol, and left me without an answer. 

"P. S. I have just heard, to my inexpressible horror, that the Jew I 
converted is dead : and being seized on his death-bed by pangs of con- 
science (would any body think it possible?) turned Jew again. 

** 5. On returning from Madame R 's funeral. 

Si A most remarkable incident occurred here a few days ago. About 
ten years since a pretty and, what is far more important, a pious young 
woman served in a confectioner's shop. Although exposed by her sweet 
occupation to many temptations, (for all young men who frequent confec- 
tioners' shops have not my morals,) she would listen to no one, and found 
all her pleasure in godliness. She never missed a prayer-meeting at 

Presidents 's, or at any other house where she could gain admittance; 

and above all, went to church at least once every Sunday. One Sunday, 
however, (it was St. Martin's day if I mistake not,) she forgot her duty 
and staid at home, busied with worldly attire. Then did the Tempter 
draw near in the form of a young man, to whom she had long been secretly 
attached. It seems probable that on that fatal day he made great advances 
in her favour, since they were shortly after married. At first they lived 
very happily, and had several children. By degrees she exhibited a 
sensible falling off in piety, in consequence of the cares and distrac- 
tions of married life. The unhappy woman appeared greatly attached 
to her duties as wife and mother, and henceforth preferred them to the 
comfort of prayer-meetings and pious readings. But the consequences of 
her carpal-mindedness soon appeared : her husband was assailed by numer- 

dered at if the liberals or free-thinkers among them exclaim. " Fable for fable, murder 
for murder, slave-dealing for slave-dealing, where is the difference ?" Had the Chris- 
tian powers really abolished the slave-trade, and destroyrd the nest of robbers which, 
to the shame of Europe, still exist on the coast of Africa ; had England, instead of send- 
ing one solitary traveller after another (men who made themselves ridiculous and con- 
temptible by displaying their Anglo-Christian anogance without the means of supporting 
it,) to be assasinaled by the natives, or to die of the climate, — sent into the interior an 
expedition fitted to command respect, and seasoned by previous residence on the coast; 
— had this expedtion been so constituted as, by its dignity and by beneficent compul- 
sion, to give a more humane character to trade; and had it sought to remove all ob- 
stacles to this object, even were it sometimes by force of arms ; — it is indubitable that 
a great part of Atrica would at this moment be infinitely more civilized than it will be 
by centuries of missions and Bible importations. Some may ask, ' A quoi bon tout cela ?' 
others, what right have we to meddle in other people's affairs ? The answer to these 
questions would lead us too far. For my own part, I confess I so tar ogree with the 
Jesuits, that I acknowledge that a noble end, — that is, a project calculated for the great- 
est possible advantage of others, and united with the power of carrying it into effect, — 
sanctifies all appropriate means which are, in the same sense, noble, so far at least as 
open force is concerned ; for deceit, trearheiy, and dishonesty can never lead to good. 
— Edit. 



292 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ous and, as I am assured, otherwise undeserved misfortunes ; some of lier 
children died ; the whole family fell into poverty ; and the husband, at 
length, into the deepest melancholy. Last Sunday, exactly on the tenth 
anniversary of that fatal Sunday on which the misguided girl did not go to 
church, her husband in a paroxysm of madness horribly murdered himself 
and his wife. — Here may be seen that the divine wrath if slow, is so 
much the more sure. I refrain from all severe animadversions : — but he 
who is not rendered serious by this warning, who does not see how sinful 
and dangerous it is to neglect, even for once, regular attendance at church, 
is truly an object of my pity. He can be made wise only by his own suf- 
fering ; and well is it for him if he become so in time! 

"6. On my last disappointment at D . 

" I am very unfortunate in love, — a circumstance which it is difficult to 
understand ; but it is nevertheless true that another of my best laid plans 
has miscarried ! 

"For a long time I had loved Miss M with all the fire of my impe- 
tuous character. I did not venture to declare it ; but my eyes, which I 
fixed upon her for hours with languishing tenderness, spoke too plainly not 
to be understood. Nevertheless, I had never been able to win aught but 
a scornful smile from my adored fair ; when an important epoch, viz. her 
eighteenth birthday, arrived. I determined now to lay storm to her heart 
by some distinguished act of gallantry — which I could do with the greater 
propriety, and without any stings of conscience, since I never entertain any 
but the most virtuous designs. I now meditated long what Jo choose ; — 
roses, and all sorts of botanical presents, as fruit and the like, are so com- 
mon-place ; — dress would not do, for that would have looked like an in- 
sinuation that I thought her vain ; — still less could I offer her any thing 
costly, which would have appeared an indirect accusation of a mercenary 
spirit : I dared not choose a pious hymn-book, or other godly work, lest 
I should sinfully profane what is holy by using it with an earthly aim ; — 
no, it must be something tender, and containing a delicate allusion to our 
situation. Suddenly, like a flash of lightning in a dark night, the thought 
occurred to me that the season of new herrings was at hand. The word 
electrified me, and, with the wonted rapidity of my conceptions, I instantly 
saw the meaning which lay hidden. I immediately sent an estafette to 
Berlin, where, as is well known, every thing new is to be had, in order, if 
possible, to get the above-mentioned creatures of the Lord before the an- 
nual advertisement of them appeared in the two blotting-paper journals of 
that city. Every thing succeeded according to my wishes: — ere many 
days had elapsed, a couple lay before me. I had them laid upon some 
leaves of artificial l forget-me-not,' instead of parsley, and once more re- 
flected upon all that their "mute language (I mean the herrings') could 
convey. 

" It would perhaps appear too far-fetched were I to urge how herring 
resembles hymen; these words having clearly an etymological relation, 
since both beginwith a great H,* and a little n occurs in both. But there 
was one circumstance which spoke plainer, viz. that they were a couple — 
the principal point of view from which they were to be regarded. The 
blue colour, which reminds us of heaven, signified our mutual gentleness 
and meekness ; and the strong salt wherewith they were salted, the acute- 
ness of our understandings, and our attic wit. The unfading leaves cried 
aloud, ' Forget me not !' and at the same time clearly alluded to that never- 
fading delight we should find in each other ! But in my opinion the crown 

* In German all substantives begin with a capital letter. — Transl. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 293 

of the whole was the pretty play of words which is in the name itself — 
herring — here-ring. It was impossible for me to declare my love and my 
honourable intentions more plainly, and at the same time more delicately, 
(in every sense of the word, for new herrings are a great delicacy in Prussia 
and Saxony.) To make all doubly sure, however, I laid on them a beau- 
tiful rose, painted and cut out of Chinese rice-paper, in the leaves of which 
I concealed with a trembling hand the first effort of my youthful muse, in 
which I expressed all these tender and delicate ideas. 

" Who could believe that all would be in vain ! The mother answered 
me in plain prose, briefly and carelessly, that her daughter was very sorry 
that she had always had an idiosyncratical antipathy to herrings ; so strong 
indeed, that she had not been able to sit out the last play of the celebrated 
Wilibald Alexis, having accidentally heard that his real name was Herring. 
She therefore sent me back my fish and the accompanying poetry, with 
many thanks for my good intentions. 

" Happily, godliness consoles a spirit truly possessed by it for every 
thing ; but I was obliged to read the Bible two hours before I recovered 
my accustomed patience and composure. I read for my edification the 
history of Jonas ; and although the whale which swallowed him was so very 
large, it continually disappeared in my fancy before the luckless herrings. 

"In my anger (which alas! I have not yet completely conquered) I 
must now censure some things in the two blotting-paper periodicals above 
mentioned. They ought not only to strive after a more correct ortho- 
graphy in their advertisements, but to pay some attention to the sense. 
In a collection of natural curiosities made by a Berlin friend of mine, I 
find two of the above-named newspapers, containing the two following- 
notices of deaths inserted by the same unfortunate father; and an old 
advertisement of a concert. 

1. ' This day the Lord, on his journey through Tettow, took to himself 
my youngest son Fritz, with his teeth.' 

2. (A month later). l This day the Lord again took to himself my 
daughter Agnes to eternal blessedness.' 

3. ' On Monday a concert will be given at the theatre. The receipts 
are to serve as the basis of a fund destined for the support of our country- 
men who fell in defence of their country.' 

" Now I ask anybody whether this is not making death ludicrous,— 
certainly a grievous sin, even when done unintentionally." 

So far friend L . 

But the night grows pale — already the morning dawns. I must say, 
therefore, like Moore, it is day — therefore good night. 1 send you this 
long letter, which an acquaintance takes to London to-morrow morning, 
through our embassy; and with it a hearty kiss, which I hope the P— — 
custom-house will suffer to pass undisputed. 

' Your faithful L 



LETTER XXVI. 

Caernarvon, July \9th, 1828. 
My Beloved Friend, 

I am now returned, dog-tired, from ascending Snowdon, the highest 
mountain in England, Scotland, and Wales, which indeed is not saying 
much. Excuse me till morning, when I will give you a faithful relation 
of my ' fata ' Meantime, good night. 



294 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

July 10th. 

As soon as I had committed the packet for you to Mr. S , with the 

strongest injunctions to care, I left Bangor as quickly as four post-horses 
could convey me. On the way I visited some iron-foundries, which, how- 
ever, I shall spare you, as I observed nothing new in them. I was rather 
unwell when I arrived at the inn at Caernarvon, where a most beautiful 
girl with long black hair, the daughter of the absent host, did the honours 
with great grace and sweetness. The following morning at nine o'clock 
I set out in tolerable weather on a ' char-a-banc,' drawn by two horses of 
the country. My driver was a little boy who did not understand a word 
of English. He drove like mad, ' en train de chasse,' over the narrow 
cross-roads of this rocky country. All my shouts and expostulations were 
vain, or seemed to be interpreted by him in the very contrary sense from 
what I intended; so that we went nine miles from the lake of Llanberis 
in less than half an hour, over stock and stone : I do not understand how 
the horses and carriages bore it. By the fishermen's huts which lie scat- 
tered along the shore, I found a gentler mode of conveyance, a pretty 
little boat, in which I embarked with two robust mountaineers. Snowdon 
now lay before us, but unfortunately had, as the country-people say, put 
on his night-cap, while the lower mountains around shone in the brightest 
sunshine. It is not more than about four thousand feet high, but has a 
very imposing aspect, in consequence of its immediate rise from the shore 
of the lake, whereas most other mountains of the same class spring from 
a base of considerable elevation. From the point where we embarked, to 
the little inn at the foot of Snowdon, the lake is three miles over; and as the 
wind was very high, our voyage was rough and tedious. The water of 
the lake is black as ink; the mountains bare and strewed with rock, and 
only varied by occasional small green glens: here and there are a few stunted 
trees, but the general aspect is wild and desert. Not far from the small church 
of Llanberis is the so-called Holy Well, inhabited by a solitary trout of enor- 
mous size, who has for centuries been exhibited to strangers. Frequently, 
however, he will not be tempted from his hiding-place; and the country- 
people think it an unlucky omen if he appears immediately. As I am an 
enemy of all oracles, I did not visit it. My companions also told me a 
history of a wondrous amazon of gigantic strength, who long led a wild 
masculine sort of life here: and described to me certain enormous bees, 
which the Welsh admire and venerate so much that they think them 
natives of Paradise. Excellent salmon are caught here: the manner of 
catching them is strange; they are hunted by small dogs trained to the 
sport, who drag them out of the mud into which they occasionally creep. 

As soon as I arrived at the inn I secured a ' poney' (a small mountain 
horse), and a guide, and hastened to set out, in hope that the threatening 
clouds would break about noon. Unfortunately, the very contrary hap- 
pened; it grew darker and'darker, and before I had climbed half an hour, 
followed by my guide leading the poney, one uniform mantle enshrouded 
hill and valley; and a heavy rain, against which my umbrella did not long 
protect me, beat upon us. We at length took refuge in the ruins of an 
old castle; and after I had laboriously climbed a decayed winding stair- 
case I reached the remains of a balcony, where I found shelter under a 
* dense mass of ivy. Everything around me wore an air of profound gloom; 
the crumbling walls, the wind which moaned plaintively through their 
fissures, the monotonous dropping of the rain, and the disagreeable ter- 
mination of my hopes conspired to throw me into a melancholy frame of 
mind. I thought with a sigh, how nothing, — not even the smallest trifle, — 
falls out as I wish it; — how all that I undertake looks ill-timed and eccen- 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 295 

trie as soon as J undertake it; so that everywhere, as here, what others 
accomplish in light and sunshine, I must toil through in storm and rain. 
Impatiently I left the old walls, and once more climbed the mountain. 
The weather was, however, now so terrible, and the increasing storm so 
dangerous even, that we were once more compelled to seek shelter in a 
miserable ruinous hut. The inside was filled with smoke, in the midst of 
which sat an old woman spinning in silence, while some half-naked chil- 
dren lay on the ground, gnawing dry crusts of bread. The whole family 
seemed hardly conscious of my entrance; at least they made no pause or 
change in their occupations. For a moment the children stared stupidly 
and incuriously at me, and then fell again into the apathy of wretchedness. 
I seated myself on the round table, the only piece of furniture in the house, 
and once more gave audience to my thoughts, which were not the most 
exhilarating. Meanwhile, as the storm raged more furiously, my guide 
earnestly advised me to turn back. This would doubtless have been the 
most reasonable course, particularly as we had not yet ascended a third 
way up the mountain. But as I had long resolved to drink your health, 
dear Julia, on the summit of Snowdon, in champagne, and had brought a 
bottle with me from Caernarvon for that express purpose, it seemed to me 
of ill omen to give it up. With the cheerfulness which a firm determina- 
tion and fixed purpose, whether in great things or small, never fails to 
impart, I said, laughing, to my guide, " If it were to rain stones instead 
of water, I would not turn back till I had been at the top of Snowdon." 
I made the poor old woman a little present, which she received with 
apathy. The road was become extremely difficult; it lay over loose and 
smooth stones washed by the rain, or over very slippery turf. I admired 
how my active sturdy little beast, shod as he was with smooth English 
shoes, could step so securely forward on such a road. 

Meanwhile it soon became so piercingly cold, that, drenched as I was 
by the rain, I could keep my seat no longer. I am so out of practice in 
climbing, that I was sometimes nearly overpowered by weariness ; but as 
the Knight in the Romance of old Spiess was cheered by the sound of 
the bells of the twelve sleeping virgins, so I was continually exhorted to 
perseverance by the " ma — ma" of the mountain sheep, who were feeding 
in hundreds on the thin herbage around me. I thought of our pet lamb 
at home, and stepped vigorously onward, till at the end of an hour I had 
recovered from my fatigue, and felt fresher than at setting out. I was 
not compensated for my sufferings by the view, for, shrouded as I was in 
clouds, I could hardly see twenty paces before me. In this mysterious 
1 clair obscur' I reached the wished-for summit, the way to which lies 
over a narrow irregular wall of rocks. A pile of stones, in the centre of 
which is a wooden pillar, marks the highest point. 

I thought I met my wraith, as a young man emerged from the mist who 
precisely resembled me, that is to say what 1 was when I wandered over 
the Swiss Alps sixteen years ago. He had, like myself, a light knapsack on 
his back, a sturdy staff in his hand, and a substantial dress, which may be call- 
ed the classical costume of mountain travellers, contrasting as strongly with 
my London boots, stiff* cravat, and tight frock-coat, as the youthful fresh- 
ness of his face with the yellow, city hue of mine. He looked like the 
young son of Nature ; I like the 'ci-devant jeune homme.' He had as- 
cended the mountain from the other side, and, without stopping, asked 
me eagerly how far it was to the inn and what sort of road it was. As 
soon as I had given him the information he desired, he bounded away over 
the rocks, singing carelessly, and soon disappeared from my sight. I. 
scratched my name near a thousand others on a block of stone, took out 



296 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the drinking-horn which my host had lent me, and ordered the guide to 
draw the cork out of my bottle of Champagne. It must have contained an 
unusual portion of fixed air, for the cork flew higher than the top of the 
pillar by which we stood ; and you may therefore, without imitating Mun- 
chausen, assert, that when I drank your health on the 17th of July, 1828, 
the cork of the Champagne bottle flew four thousand feet above the level of 
the sea. I filled the horn, to the foaming brim, and shouted with stentor 
voice into the dim obscure, ' Long life to Julia !' with nine times nine (in the 
English style). Three times I emptied the cup ; and thirsty and exhausted 
as I was, never did I relish Champagne more. After my libation was 
completed, the prayers I sent up were not words, but profound emotions ; 
the most fervent among which was the wish, that it might be Heaven's 
will to grant happiness on earth to you, and then ' if possible,' to me ;— 
and see, a pretty lamb sprang forth from the cloudy veil, and the mist 
opened and rolled away, and before us lay the earth suddenly gilded by a 
momentary gleam of sunshine. But in a minute the curtain fell again, — 
an emblem of my destiny : the beautiful and the desirable — the gilded 
earth — appear now and then like delusive meteors before me : as soon as 
I seek to grasp them, they vanish like dreams. 

As there was no hope that the weather would become permanently 
clear in these elevated regions, we resolved to return. I found myself so 
strengthened that I not only felt no trace of weariness, but experienced a 
feeling unknown for years, in which walking and running, so far from be- 
ing irksome, are in themselves a source of elastic enjoyment. I sprang, 
therefore, like my youthful double, so rapidly over the rocks and down the 
wet rushy slopes, that in a few minutes I accomplished a portion of the 
way which it had taken me an hour and a half to ascend. 1 emerged at 
length from the interminable cloud ; and if the prospect were less magni- 
ficent than from the summit, it still afforded me great delight. It was 
still about seven hundred feet above the level of the sea, which lay in bound- 
less extent before me. The Island of Anglesea reposed on its bosom ; 
and in the mountain-gorges, which intersected each other in every direc- 
tion, I counted above twenty small lakes ; some dark, some so brightly 
illumined by the sun that the eye could scarcely bear to rest on their mir- 
ror-like surface, Meanwhile the guide had overtaken me ; but as I could 
now perfectly distinguish the ' terrain,' the evening was beautiful, and I 
felt no fatigue, I let him and his clever little horse return home by the 
straight road, and determined to take my solitary way across the most 
striking points, l et bien m'en,' for since I was in Switzerland I remember 
no more delicious walk. — I followed a defile along the wild pass of Llan- 
beris, celebrated in the wars between the English and the Welsh, and 
where the latter, under their great prince Llewellyn, often contemplated 
the destruction of their foreign invaders, perhaps from the very spot where 
I then stood. 

The jagged walls of rock which in many places sank perpendicularly to 
the pass, are a good exercise for heads subject to giddiness. I gradually 
ascended many considerable peaks of the same kind, and found only an 
enjoyment the more in the slight shudder which my perilous station excited. 
" L'emotion du danger plait a l'homme," says Madame de Stael. My 
solitude was not complete. The mountain sheep which I have already 
mentioned, much smaller than the ordinary breeds, wild and agile as the 
chamois, often bounded before me like roes, and in their flight leaped 
down crags and precipices where it would not have been easy for any one 
to follow them. The wool of these sheep is as remarkable for coarseness, 
as their flesh for tenderness and delicacy. The London ' gourmands' set 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 297 

a high value upon it, and maintain that a man who lias not eaten roast 
mutton from Snowdon has no conception of the ideal in that kind. 

I came almost into collision with a large bird of prey, which hovering 
slowly with out-spread wings, had fixed his eyes so intently on some- 
thing beneath, and had so little calculated on making my acquaint- 
ance in this impracticable path, that I could almost have seized him with 
my hands before he perceived me. He darted away with the velocity of 
an arrow, but did not for a moment lose sight of the object of his eager 
pursuit ; and I saw him for a long time like a point, poised in the blue ether, 
till the sun sunk behind the surrounding mountain. 

I now endeavoured to reach the hut at which I had before stopped, in as 
straight a line as possible. Not far from it a girl was milking her cow, 
which afforded me a refreshing draught. Here too I found my guide, and 
thankfully availed myself of his services during the rest of my way, wrapt 
in my cloak and resting most luxuriously on my sure-footed 'poney.' 
After returning to my inn and changing my clothes, I set out afresh and 
embarked on the lake, now splendidly burnished with the glow of evening. 
The air was become mild and soft ; fish leaped sportively from the water, 
and herons wheeled their graceful flight around the sedgy shores ; while 
here and there a fire gleamed upon the mountains, and the heavy thunder 
of blasted rocks resounded from the distant quarries. 

Long had the moon's sickle stood aloft in the deep blue heavens, when 
the dark-locked Hebe welcomed me back to Caernarvon. 

July 2 Is/. 

I was still somewhat fatigued by my yesterday's expedition, and content- 
ed myself with a walk to the celebrated castle built by Edward I. the con- 
queror of Wales, and destroyed by Cromwell. It is one of the most 
magnificent ruins in England. The only thing to regret is, that it stands 
so near the town, and not in solitary grandeur amid the mountains. The 
outer walls, although in ruins, still form an unbroken line, enclosing 
nearly three acres of ground. The interior space, overgrown with grass 
and filled with rubbish and with thistles, is nearly eight hundred paces long. 
It is surrounded by seven slender but strong towers, of different forms and 
sizes. One of them may still be ascended, and I climbed by a crumbling 
staircase of a hundred and forty steps to its platform, whence I enjoyed a 
magnificent view over sea, mountains, and town. On descending, my 
guide showed me the remains of a vaulted chamber, in which, according 
to tradition, Edward II., the first prince of Wales, was born. The Welsh, 
in consequence of the oppression of English governors in the earlier times 
of partial and momentary conquest, had declared to the king that they 
would obey none but a prince of their own nation. Edward therefore 
sent for his wife Eleanor in the depth of winter that she might lie-in in 
Caernarvon castle. She bore a prince : upon which the king summoned 
the nobles and chiefs of the land, and asked them solemnly whether they 
would submit to the rule of a prince who was born in Wales, and could 
not speak a word of English. On their giving a joyful and surprised as- 
sent, he presented to them his new-born son, exclaiming in broken Welsh, 
Eich dyn ! i. e. " This is your man !" which has been corrupted into the 
present motto of the English arms, Ich Dien. 

Over the great gate still stands the statue of Edward, with a crown on 
his head and a drawn dagger in his right hand, as if after six centuries he 
were still guarding the crumbling walls of his castle. He might justly 
have broken out into indignant complaint at the desecration I witnessed. 
In the midst of these majestic ruins, a camel and some monkies in red 
jackets were performing their antics, while a ragged multitude stood shout- 

38 



298 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ing and laughing around, unconscious of the wretched contrast which they 
formed with these solemn remains of past ages. 

The tower in which the prince was born is called the Eagle Tower ; not 
from that circumstance, but from four colossal eagles which crowned its 
pinnacles, one of which is still remaining. It is believed to be Roman, for 
Caernarvon stands on the site of the ancient Segontium, which .... 
But I am wandering too far, and am in the high road to fall into the tone 
of a tour-writer by profession, who thinks himself privileged to bore if he 
does not instruct, although his information is generally the result of a weary 
search through road-books and local descriptions. ' Je n'ai pas cette 
pretension, vous le savez, je laisse errer ma plume,' heedless whither it 
leads me. 

The Marquis of Anglesea has lately established a sea-bath here, which 
is supplied by a steam-engine, and very elegantly fitted up. I availed my- 
self of it on my way back from the castle, and observed in the entertaining- 
room a billiard-table of metal set in stone. It is impossible to desire one 
more accurate ; — whether the steam-engine performed the office of mark- 
ing, I forgot to ask. This is by no means impossible, in a country in 
which somebody has gravely proposed to establish steam-waiters in coffee- 
houses, and in which affairs would go on much the same if a forty-horse- 
power steam-engine sat upon the throne. 

Dear Julia, a traveller must be allowed to speak often and much of 
weather and of eating. The Novels of the Illustrious, erst Unknown, or 
the Illustrious Unknown, derive no inconsiderable part of their attractions 
from the masterly pictures of this kind they contain. Whose mouth does 
not water when he sees Dalgetty, the soldier of fortune, display at the ta- 
ble a prowess even greater than in the fight? I am really not in joke when 
I assure you that when I have lost my appetite, I often read an hour or 
two in the works of the Great Unknown, and find it completely restored. 
To-day I wanted no stimulus of this or any kind. It was sufficient to see 
the most excellent fresh fish and the far-famed 'mountain mutton' smok- 
ing on the table, to induce me to fall on them with ravenous hunger; for 
a sea-bath and the ascent of Snowdon have a yet greater influence on the 
stomach than Walter Scott. My dark-locked maiden, who, as I was the 
only guest in the house, waited on me herself, was at length impatient of 
my reiterated attacks on the mutton; and said somewhat sullenly that I 
did nothing but eat, except when I was rambling about. She was of a 
much more ethereal nature, and in the short time I had been here, had 
read through half my portable Novel library. Every time I saw her she 
presented me with a newly devoured volume, and begged so earnestly for 
another, that I must have had a hard heart to refuse her. 

July 22. 
A large packet has been sent after me to-day from Bangor. I vainly 
searched it for tidings from you; but could not refrain from laughing hear- 
tily over a letter from L , who writes to me in despair at the scrape 

he is in. He tells me that he suffered his "Reflections" (the beginning 
of which I sent you,) to be printed in fragments, and a certain party which 
feels itself too sore not to be over-sensitive ' y a entendu malice.' They 
have inserted a furious article against him in the Lamb's Journal; and poor 

L , who knows the people he has to deal with, is afraid that he will 

certainly be rejected at his examination. As this philippic is not long, and 
is very characteristic of our times, and as I have a holiday to-day»*I shall 
transcribe it with some abridgments. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 299 

" On the reflections of a pious <SW of Sandomir : A discourse by Herr 
von Frommel, Adjutant of his Highness the Prince of . Pro- 
nounced in the Nobility's pious Conventicle for both sexes, at A , 

No. 33, Zion Street, May 4th, \ ( 628. (Reprinted separately, from the 
Collection, for true Christians.) 

" High and high-well born, pious brethren and sisters ! Truly is it said 
there be many wolves in sheep's clothing! The author of these reflections 
is doubtless the wearer of such a sheepskin. It is not difficult to discover 
that under the mask of godliness, and of a simplicity approaching to silli- 
ness, are heard the hissings of that same mischievous serpent who seduced 
our pious mother Eve, who has since incessantly vented his venom upon 
our holy Religion, and still labours to overthrow the throne and the altar. 
But we, my brethren, will not resemble our, alas! too credulous Mother, 
but will exterminate the satellites of the Devil wherever we find them, with 
fire and sword. 

"Yes, my friends, you know and are certain that the Devil is, and 
lives — not as the unbelieving herd say, in us, as the demon of anger, of 
vanity, of hatred, of sin; — no, bodily he roams over the earth, like a roar- 
ing lion, with goat's horns and a long tail and pestilential stench, wherever 
he chooses to show himself. He who does not thus believe on the Devil, 
has no true religion. But wherefore do I urge this? We are no reason- 
ers — no worldly-wise : here are none but simple lambs, one flock under 
one shepherd. 

" A warning is, however, necessary; and therefore I now give the alarm. 
We have as yet seen only fragments of these poisonous 'Reflections,' and 
know not how far the author means to go; — but they are aimed at us; of 
that there is no doubt; and, God be praised ! we find already enough fully 
to justisfy our denouncing him as an Atheist. Is it not obvious that he 
jests at Providence and its omnipotence? We hope, we pray, therefore, 
confidently and earnestly, that Omnipotence will speedily avenge itself, and 
give this presumptuous soul a foretaste of what awaits him in the everlast- 
ing flames. And may the all-merciful God do this promptly and fearfully, 
that no innocent lamb of our flock may be led astray by that unclean one. 
Certainly, my friends, a fiend, a vampire, an atheist wrote these words. 
Nothing is sacred to hjm. He attacks not alone the Creator, but even the 
Redeemer of the world. 

" Oh my brethren and sisters ! horrible — we may reckon upon it as- 
suredly — horrible will be the lot of such an one at the last dry ! when the 
dead shall arise in the body, and his carnal ear shall hear again, only to 
listen to the thunders of the trumpets which announce to him his eternal 
damnation. There will be no pity! There will be weeping and gnashing 
of teeth! And let us follow that example, and be inexorable towards him,' 
as will be that eternal condemnation. 

" We could scarcely have believed that after all our Christian labours 
in our so truly — I say it with pride — Christian city, in which everything is 
done to destroy the poison of toleration and of mad confidence in our own 
judgment, men could be found amongst us, who would dare, unrestrained 
by all authority, to go their own way in search of truth; — these freethinkers 
and heathens spring up only because the constituted authorities (even our 
otherwise so active Censorship at their head) are far too indulgent to- 
wards the greatest of all crimes, unbelief. It would perhaps have been 
expedient and beneficial to introduce a moderate Inquisition, together with 
the new prayer book, for the defence of true believers, those genuine Chris- 
tians, those sole predestined favourites of God, who believe whatever their 



300 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

King and their Church order, without hesitation or examination. Only 
such can have any real value for Church or State. Away then with all 
others ! Be they damned for ever ! like all the unbaptized children of Jews 
and Heathens. Oh could we but for ever expunge from our annals that 
disgraceful period in which a philosopher (and not merely an ideological 
but a practical philosopher) sat on a German throne, — and, my Christian 
brethren, would you believe it? received the name of the Great! The 
mildest that we, converted to the grace of godliness with tears of blood, 
can now say of him is, the Lord be merciful to his poor soul ! Long how- 
ever must the pious and their sacred legion struggle, before the seed which 
this great (\ ! !) man sowed will be wholly trodden down ; before the last 
trace of that miserable Reason which he fostered will be entirely eradi- 
cated. Nevertheless, despair not, my Christian brethren ; to such holy 
zeal as ours nothing is impossible, and this world's rewards await you in 
various forms here, from those exalted sources from which we daily draw; 
and hereafter yet greater glories in the Palace of the Lord. Only beware 
of reasoning, in every shape : believe — not upon your own inquiry — but as 
it is prescribed to you ; and above all, beware of Toleration ! Love your 
Redeemer not only above all, but solely and alone. But he who is not for 
him is against him, and upon such have no mercy. Persecute them with- 
out intermission. And if this cannot be done openly, undermine hirn with 
calumnies, with secret detraction 5 yea, shun not the rankest lies, provided 
you can disseminate thern with security to yourselves ; for remember that 
the end sanctifies all means. x\h, were we but in such a frame of mind 
as never to wax cool in our zeal ! It is only because we are luke-warm, 
that these philosophers have dared to preach that virtue of heathens, tole- 
ration. We have seen to what it brought us when the delirious raving 
about freedom seized the mob, and universal anarchy threatened to over- 
throw the throne, the church, our old nobility, and everything venerable. 
Therefore away with every thought of mischievous tolerance towards those 
who think otherwise ! Christ indeed has said, l * Bless those who curse 
you:" and further, "If any man strike you on one cheek, offer him the 
other also." But upon this subject I have my own thoughts. Passages 
of this sort ought certainly to be differently understood: for how could 
they be reconciled with the indispensable laws of our station ? Does not 
the honour of our rank, and of our uniform, command us instantly and 
without hesitation, to strike again a man who should dare to lay hands upon 
lis? Yes, I know not whether even I, the favourite of my prince, should 
dare to show myself at court or in the highest places, after publicly receiv- 
ing a slap on the face. It is therefore highly probable that our Saviour in- 
tended these words to be taken with one limitation, — that is, for the com- 
mon people, in whom it is unquestionably meritorious when struck on one 
cheek, instead of giving way to wrath and bitterness, to offer the other. 
Let it be remembered also, that when Christ became man, he sought out 
not only a noble but a royal race. And who knows whether the disciples 
were really of such mean extraction as they are represented, and not per- 
haps men of old Jewish families of high descent ? the matter is wrapt in so 
much historical darkness. And doth not Christ say, " My coming is not 
to bring peace, but rather the sword ?" These two passages would seem 
to contradict each other, if we did not understand that patience is enjoin- 
ed to one class and warfare to. the other. For is not that the primitive 
destination of the nobility ? — formerly with the sword, now with the pen 
and the word. For this cause, my brethren and sisters, strive against the 
unbelieving. Gird on the sword of the times, and strive for the Lord with 
the Bible and Jacob Bohrhen, with the Chamberlain's Key and the Field 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 301 

Marshal's Baton, with the Prayer-book and the Surplice. Believe me, my 
dear friends, soon shall we earn the fruits of our holy zeal : soon shall we be- 
gin to stand on the brazen floor. 

"People yield more and more to our secret influence and strong union: 
the powerful support which we give to all our fellow-labourers when their 
labours in the vineyard deserve it; the many favours from exalted sources, of 
which we are the sharers; above all, the inexorable piety we are known to 
possess, hold even the most daring within bounds, and lay the timid in shoals 
at our feet. 

" But whenever an Antichrist dares to attack us, (and whoever dares to do 
so is one,) I exhort you again, — watch, strive, destroy, and rest not till your 
victim is fallen. It is all for Charity's sake, the last effort for a poor erring 
mortal, to force him, if possible, to acknowledge Christ. — Amen. 

" It will perhaps be agreeable to this noble congregation in Christ, and 
moving to their hearts, if I hereby communicate to them, that we have been 
so happy in the course of the present month as to bring seven and a half 
.condemned souls to the true faith, which has cost us not more than a hundred 
reichsthalers. As we are obliged to keep a worldly account of these matters, 
we have agreed to reckon children under twelve years of age as half souls. 
And may Heaven in like manner bless our further pious efforts, and the dis- 
interested zeal with which the unconverted are drawn to the lap of Jesus.— 
Amen." 

I had read thus far when the little Eliza appeared with my breakfast, and 
with an arch good-nature bid me good morning " after my long sleep." She 
had just been to church, had all the consciousness of being well-dressed, and 
was waiting upon a foreigner ; three things which greatly incline women to be 
tender-hearted. She accordingly seemed almost embarrassed when I inquir- 
ed about my departure early the following morning ; but was soon consoled 
when I promised to leave her my travelling library, and to bring her a fresh 
assortment of books in a week. 

After dinner I went, under her guidance, to visit the walks around the town. 
One of these is most romantically placed on a large rock. We saw from 
hence to Snovvdon, in almost transparent clearness, undimmed by a single 
cloud ; and I could not restrain some feelings of vexation at having so exactly 
missed the right day. 

After this pastoral walk, ' tender mutton' closed a day of which I am sorry 
to have nothing more interesting to record. 

But I now recollect a somewhat singular incident which my host told me to- 
day. On the night of the 5th of August, 1820, the boat which crossed a fer- 
ry at this place was lost, and out of twenty-six persons only one man was saved. 
Exactly thirty-seven years before, the same disaster occurred, and out of sixty- 
nine persons only one survived. What renders the coincidence the more perfect 
is, that on both occasions the name of the sole survivor was Hugh Williams. 

Bangor, July 22d. 

Bangor is also a bathing place; that is, every body may jump into the 
sea who likes it. The artificial arrangements for the purpose are reduced 
to the private tub-establishment of one old woman, who lives in a wretch- 
ed hovel on the shore; and if an order is given an hour before, heats the 
sea-water in pots and kettles on her hearth, and proceeds l sans facon,' 
to undress and afterwards to rub down and dress again any stranger 
who may come unprovided with a servant. I entered her hut accident- 
ally, and after I had taken a bath of this sort, ' pour la rarite du fait,' 
I hired a boat to take me across the arm of the sea which divides Wales 
from the island of Anglesea. Here is another castle built by Edward I., 
and destroyed by Cromwell ; it was originally even of greater extent 



302 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

than that at Caernarvon, and covered five acres of ground ; hut the ruins 
are less picturesque, in consequence of its having lost all its towers. 
To see it thoroughly one must walk along the narrow and lofty walls, 
which are wholly unprotected. The hoy who keeps the keys ran along 
like a squirrel ; but the barber of the town, who offered his services as 
guide when I landed, left me in the lurch at the first step, The ruin 
stands in the park of a Mr. Bulkley : with singular bad taste he has made 
a tennis-court within its enclosure. His house commands a very cele- 
brated view. It is, however, far surpassed by one I met with about a 
mile and a half further on, from a simple and elegant cottage called 
Craig y Don. This is a true gem, — one of those blessed spots which 
leave nothing to wish. It lies between thickly wooded rocks close to 
the sea: not too large, but adorned like a boudoir, surrounded by the 
greenest turf, and by the blended beauty of flowers of all colours ; the 
whole house, with its thatched roof and verandah tapestried with China 
roses and blue convolvuluses, forms a picture which, enclosed as it is 
between wood and rock, formed the most indescribably beautiful con- 
trast with the sublime scenery around it. Labyrinthine footpaths wind 
in all directions through the cool and shady thicket, subdividing into 
many and exquisite fragments the rich treasures of landscape beauty 
afforded by the situation. Beneath and in front lies the deep blue sea, 
whose surf beats against the sharp pointed rocks upon which I stood; 
while further away on its smooth mirror a hundred fishing-boats and 
other vessels glided to and fro. Among them I descried the cutter of 
the proprietor of Craig y Don lying at anchor, and two steam-boats, one 
of which, far in the distance, left a long line of smoke; the other, close 
to shore, sent up a slender column of white vapour. On the right, a 
deep bay stretches into the land, studded with little islands of every 
character and form ; some clothed with brushwood, others bare and al- 
most polished by the waves ; some covered with little huts, others 
crowned with upright tower-like rocks. On turning again toward the 
strait, and following its gradual contraction, my eye rested with amaze- 
ment on that stupendous chain-bridge which closes the prospect: that 
giant work which is justly called the eighth wonder of the world, and 
which, bidding defiance to nature, has united two portions of land which 
she had severed by the ocean. I shall have an opportunity hereafter of 
describing it more nearly ; from this point it looks as if spiders had 
woven it in the air. 

After I had satisfied myself with gazing at this romantic specimen of 
human power and skill, I turned to one of the greatest and most varied 
works of nature; — the entire range of the Welsh mountains, which 
rises immediately from the water, distinct and near enough clearly to dis- 
tinguish woods, villages and valleys, and stretches along an extent of ten 
miles. The mountains grouped themselves in every variety of light and 
shadow ; some were wrapped in clouds, some gleamed brightly in the 
sun, others stretched their blue heads even above the clouds ; and vil- 
lages, towns, white churches, handsome country-houses and castles, were 
visible in their gorges, while shifting gleams of light played on the 
green slopes at their foot. The eye, wearied with a variety, turns to 
the north, which is on my left. Here nothing distracts the gaze : the 
wide ocean alone blends with the sky. For a short time you follow the 
retreating shore of Anglesea at your side, on which large nut-trees and 
oaks droop their pliant boughs into the sea, and then you are alone with 
air and water ; or at most you fancy you descry the sails of a distant 
vessel, or shape fantastic pictures in the clouds. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 303 

After an hour of intense enjoyment, I rode at the full speed of a pony, 
which I hired in Anglesea, to the great bridge. The best point of view 
is from the beach, near some fishing huts about a hundred paces from 
the bridge. The more thoroughly and minutely I viewed it, the greater 
was my astonishment. I thought I beheld in a dream a filagree work 
suspended by fairies in the air. In short, the fancy cannot exhaust itself 
in comparisons; and as a stage-coach with four horses drove rapidly 
over the arch a hundred feet high and six hundred wide, half concealed 
by the intertexture of the chains on which the bridge is suspended, I 
thought I saw larks fluttering in a net. The men who were seated in 
various parts of the chain- work, giving it its first coat of paint, were like 
captive insects. Those who know the castle at Berlin will be able to 
form some idea of the enormous dimensions of this bridge, when they 
hear that it would stand perfectly well under the centre arch : and yet 
the chains hold the latter so firmly, that even driving at the quickest 
rate or with the heaviest burden, which is by no means forbidden, does 
not excite the smallest perceptible vibration. The bridge is divided at 
the top into three roads, one for going, another for returning, and a 
third for foot-passengers. The planks rest on an iron grating, so that 
they are easily removed when out of repair, and no danger is to be ap- 
prehended when they break. Every three years the whole iron work 
receives a fresh coat of paint, to prevent rust. The name of the archi- 
tect, who has earned a high and lasting reputation, is Telford. ' Sur 
ce, n'ayant plus rien a dire,' I close my epistle, and wish you, my dear 
Julia, all the happiness and blessings you deserve, ' et c'est beaucoup 
dire.' Ever your most faithful L . 



LETTER XXVII. 

Bangor, July 23, 1828. 

ClTERE EX BONNE, 

One little defect in this otherwise so beautiful landscape is caused by the ebb 
and flow. During a considerable part of the day a large portion of the chan- 
nel of the Menai (as this strait is called) is dry, and exhibits only a tract of 
sand and mud. Probably the indescribably persecuting swarms of flies which 
infest this place, pouring forth in thousands in search of prey, attacking man 
and beast, and pursuing their victims with relentless pertinacity, may be ascri- 
bed to the same cause. In vain do you put your horse to his full speed : the 
swarm, congregated into a ball like the Macedonian phalanx, accompany your 
flight, and disperse themselves over their prey the moment you stop ; nor will 
anything but their complete destruction deliver you from them. Even a house 
does not always afford secure refuge. I have found in some of my expeditions 
that when once they have seized upon a victim, they will wait patiently at the 
door till he comes out again. The only way is to seek out some place through 
which a strong current of wind passes. This they cannot resist. The cows 
which graze on the hilly shores are quite aware of this fact, and are always to 
be seen standing perfectly still, ruminating, in such spots. I watched one to- 
day for a long time, as she stood on a solitary point of rock, her outline thrown 
out sharply on the sky behind; motionless, but for the slight working of her jaw, 
or the occassional sweep of her tail against her sides. How well, thought I, 
might an ingenious mechanic frame a colossal image of this animal, and pro- 
vide it with the simple mechanical apparatus necessary to imitate that slight 
motion, — and what an acquisition were this for a German-English garden at 



304 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

home ! for instance at Casscl, opposite to the Hercules, or at WSrlitz, where 
she might be set to graze on the burning mountain. This meritorious concep- 
tion you must try to put in execution. 

Do you remember Clementi Brentano ? When the amiable and kind-heart- 
ed grandson of Count L was showing him the view from his hunting-seat 

over a flat but beautifully wooded country, the Count joined them, and asked 
Brentano rather absurdly, " what great improvement he could suggest ?" 
Brentano fell into a profound meditation, and after some time replied, looking 
earnestly at the attentive and expecting Count, " What think you, Count, of 
making some hills of boards and painting them blue ?" Improvements in this 
taste, though perhaps not quite so absurd and palpable, are still daily perpetra- 
ted in our beloved fatherland, in spite even of the Berlin Horticultural Society. 

Dearest Julia, will you drive with me to Plas Newydd,Lord Anglesea's park 
in Anglesea ? The horses of fancy are soon harnessed. 

We repass the giant bridge, follow the high-road to Ireland for a short time, 
and soon see from afar the summit of the pillar which a grateful country has 
raised to General Paget, then Lord Uxbridge, and now Marquis of Anglesea, 
in memory of the leg which he left on the field of Waterloo. About a mile 
and a half further on, we arrive at the gate of Plas Newydd. The most re- 
markable things here are the cromlechs, whose precise destination is unknown; 
they are generally believed to be druidical burial places. They are huge 
stones, commonly three or four in number, forming a sort of rude gateway. 
Some are of such enormous size that it is inexplicable how they could be 
brought to such eleyated situations without the most mechanical aid. It is, 
however, difficult to say what is possible to human strength, excited by unfet- 
tered will or by religious fanaticism. I remember reading that a captain of a 
ship coasting along the shore of Japan, saw two junks of the largest size, that 
is, nearly as big as frigates, carried by thousands of men across a chain of hills. 

The cromlechs of Anglesea, which are not of the largest class, have proba- 
bly suggested the thought of building a druidical cottage in an appropriate spot, 
commanding a beautiful view of Snowdon. It is, however, a strange hetero- 
geneous chaos of ancient and modern things. In the small dark rooms light 
is very prettily introduced, by means of looking-glass doors, which answer the 
double purpose of reflecting the most beautiful bits of the landscape like fram- 
ed pictures. In the window stood a large sort of show-box, a camera-ob- 
scura, and a kaleidescope of a new kind — not filled like the old one, but ex- 
hibiting under countless changes any object beheld through it. Flowers espe- 
cially produce a most extraordinary effect, by the constantly varying brilliancy 
of their colours. If you wish for one I will send it you from London : it costs 
eight guineas. The house and grounds contain nothing remarkable, and are 
seldom inhabited by the proprietor, whose principal residence is in England. 

July 23rd. 
To-day I received, with great delight, a long letter from you * * 

* * * * * * * * lam very glad 

that you are not offended at L 's jest, and that you do not, like Herr von 

Frommel,* consider him an impious wretch. You must see, in the first place, 
that he aims his wit only at the servile credulity of those men who convert the 
Unutterable, the Being of all Beings, — who is ever present to us in a deep and 
dim consciousness, but whom we can never comprehend, — into a strange com- 
pound of tyrant, pedagogue, and attendant spirit : who think themselves con- 
stantly guided by him in leading-strings, and regard all they see and hear, or 
whatever happens to them, as an interposition of God, and regarding their 

* A fictitious name, which might be Englished, Mr. Cant.— Transl. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 



305 



own littleness alone. If, for instance, they fall into the water, or if they win 
a prize in the lottery, they see the finger of God incontestably in that incident; 
if they escape any danger, they pour out the most vehements thanks to God, as 
if some strange power had sent the danger, and God, like a careful and prompt 
guardian, had flown to their succour and deliverance. They might reflect, 
that whence the deliverance comes, thence comes also the danger ; whence 
the pleasure, the pain ; whence life, death. The whole is one scheme of exis- 
tence, bestowed and governed not according to momentary caprice, but to 
immutable laws. Such petty views as those he satirizes, bring down the idea 
of Omnipotence to our own mutability and frailty. Our thanks, be they even 
speechless, are due to Eternal Love, for all that is ; and perhaps no prayer 
offered by man can be more worthy of the Deity, than that mute and raptur- 
ous feeling of gratitude. But it is childish to be ever ascribing to the inter- 
vention of Omnipotence common-place and external individual occurrences ; 
such as lucky and unlucky accidents, riches, poverty, death, and the like, which 
are subjected to the laws of nature ; or (according to the measure of our pow- 
ers) to our own control. Such an intervention on the behalf of our beloved 
selves, would be no less strange and ill-adapted, with a view to our instruc- 
tion and improvement, than experience proves it to be useless. 

His satire is also directed against Christians — who are no Christians 
— and are neither so-called Atheists (almost always a senseless denomi- 
nation), nor yet genuine sincere fanatics; but that odious race of mo- 
dern pietists, who are either feeble creatures with irritable nerves, or 
hypocrites of the most impious sort, and further removed from the ele- 
vated purity of Christ than the Dalai Lama. These are the true Phari- 
sees and dealers in the temple, whom Christ would cast out were he 
dow on earth. These are they who, were he now to appear, under a 
Dew and obscure name, would be the first to cry out, ' Crucify him !'* 

In the main I confess I agree with L ; though, with regard to the 

subject of the 'Reflections,' every opinion can be but hypothetical, and 
in truth, what relates to another state of existence must, of necessity, 
be totally different from all that we have the capacity of understanding 
in this. Had we been able to know it, or had it been designed that we 
should do so, the Author of our nature would have rendered it as clear, 
as obvious to us, as it is that we feel, or think, or exist. What is need- 
ful, is revealed to us inwardly; and this has been declared from all time, 
in words more or less plain and significant, by the great spirits whom 
He has sent on earth. 

That the human race is not destined to stand still like a machine de- 
void of will, or to revolve in one perpetual circle, — but, on the contra- 
ry, continually to advance, till it has ended its cycle of existence, and 
attained the highest perfection of which it is capable, I never for an in- 
stant doubt. But my hypothesis is this ; — that our earth, like a vessel 
loosened from her moorings, is left, under the protection and coercion 
of the immutable laws of nature, to the management of her own crew. 
We ourselves, thenceforth, are the framers of our own destiny, (insofar 
as it depends on human operation, and not on those immutable laws,) 

* It is a great mistake to think that this is a subject only for ridicule or for rational indig- 
nation. The alliance of the so-called saints, is not without danger to all men of large and 
liberal opinions. There is a fermentation of Jesuitical masses, who avail themselves of the 
form of Protestantism, because Catholicism will no longer answer their purpose. They are 
guided by the same principles to which the Jesuits owed their power, governed by the same 
'esprit de corps,' constituted according to a like regular organization ; instead of the ' aquet 
ta,' indeed, they use, and with signal success, the ten times more formidable poison of cal- 
umny, which, like other instruments of darkness, is so easily employed by a secret associa- 
tion. — Germany has much more to dread from such saints, than from the dreams ol freedom, 
promulgated by a set of enthusiastic young students on the Wartburg. — Edit. 

39 



306 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

and of our own history, whether great or small, by our own moral 
strength or weakness. 

It is not, in my opinion, necessary to suppose the extraordinary and 
special interposition of any power who causes a hard winter in Russia 
for the special overthrow of Napoleon ; — Napoleon rather is overthrown 
by the vicious principle which guides him ; and which, in the long run, 
must inevitably wreck him upon some such external and immediate 
cause or other. The physical incident happens, with reference to him, 
only accidentally; with reference to itself, doubtless, in that necessary 
series of laws to which it is subject, although these laws are unknown to us. 

On the same grounds, Providence will generally favour the virtuous, 
the industrious, the frugal, the prudent, and grant many or most of their 
desires; while the foolish and the wicked, who set themselves in oppo- 
sition and hostility to the world, are not ordinarily so successful or so hap- 
py. If a man lets his hand lie in the ice, it is probable that Providence 
will ordain it to be frozen; or if he holds it in the fire, to be burnt. 
Those who go to sea, Providence will sometimes permit to be drowned; 
those, on the other hand, who never quit dry ground, Providence will 
hardly suffer to perish in the sea. 

It is therefore justly said, " Help yourself, and Heaven will help you." 
The truth is, that God has helped us from the beginning: the work of 
the master is completed; and, as far as it was intended to be so, perfect: 
it requires, therefore, no further extraordinary aids and corrections from 
above; its further development and improvement in this world is placed 
in our own hands. We may be good or bad, wise or foolish, not always 
perhaps in the degree which we, as individuals, might choose, were our 
wills perfectly free, but so far as the state of the human race immedi- 
ately preceding us has formed us to decide. 

Virtue and vice, wisdom and folly, are indeed words which receive 
their meaning solely from human society, and apart from that would 
have no signification. The ideas of the good and the wicked are excited 
solely by the effect of our actions upon others; for a man who never 
saw a fellow-man can act neither well nor ill, — nay, can scarcely feel or 
think, well or ill: he possesses, indeed, all the requisite capacities which 
form the groundwork of his higher moral and intellectual nature; but it 
is only by means of creatures of a like nature, that these capacities can 
be brought into activity; as fire can only exist, or become sensible, when 
combustible materials are present. The ideas of prudent and impru- 
dent arise indeed earlier, and with reference to the individual alone; for 
a single man in conflict with inanimate nature may either injure himself 
foolishly, or employ the materials given him with prudence and skill; 
and may have a full perception of these qualities or modes of action in 
himself. To be good, therefore, in every point of view, means nothing 
but to love other men, and to submit to the laws and rules imposed by 
society: to be wicked, to rebel against those laws, to disregard the weal 
of others, and in our conduct to have only our own momentary gratifi- 
cation in view. To be prudent, on the other hand, is only to have the 
power of perceiving and securing our own advantage by the best and 
aptest means: to be imprudent, to neglect these means, or to form a false 
estimate concerning them. 

It is evident also that good and prudent — wicked and imprudent — are 
in the highest sense nearly synonymous: for a man who is good, will, 
in the common order of events, please his fellow-men, consequently will 
be beloved by them, and consequently will be found to be prudent, — that 
is, to have secured his own greatest happiness and advantage : while the 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 307 

bad man, engaged in an interminable conflict, must at length have the 
worst, and consequently suffer loss and injury. 

But when once the moral sense has received its last development and 
highest culture, the virtuous man, though insulated, frames laws to him- 
self, which he follows, unheeding of advantage, danger, or the opinion 
of others. The bases of these laws will, however, always be what I have 
described; — consideration of the well-being of his fellow-men, and of 
the duty thence deduced, which follows as a consequence of the way he 
has traced out to himself. But when this point is reached, the inward 
consciousness of having fulfilled this duty, gives the moral man purer 
and higher satisfaction than the possession of all earthly enjoyments 
could confer upon him. It is therefore permanently, and in both views 
of the subject, true, that it is the highest prudence to be virtuous, the 
greatest folly to be wicked. 

But here, indeed, from the busy and complicated nature of human life, 
arise many and varied shades and distinctions. It is very easy, even 
with great prudence, where the earthly and external is concerned, to 
seize upon appearance instead of reality. It is possible for one man to 
deceive others, and to make them believe that he does them good, that 
he deserves their respect and their thanks, when he only uses them as 
instruments of his own advantage, and does them the bitterest injury. 
Folly too often produces the opposite effect, and imputes to others wicked 
designs and bad motives, where the very contrary have place. Hence 
arises the maxim, — painful indeed! but too firmly based on universal 
experience, — that in worldly connections and affairs, folly and impru- 
dence are productive of more certain disadvantage to the individual than 
vice and wickedness. The external consequences of the latter may be 
kept off, perhaps entirely prevented, by prudence; but nothing can ward 
off the consequences of folly, which is perpetually working against itself. 

The want, and the existence, of positive religions are mainly attributa- 
ble to the general persuasion of this truth, and of the consequent insuffi- 
ciency of penal laws of human institution. Hence arises the doctrine of 
future rewards and punishments, awarded by an All-seeing Power, against 
whose eye the precautions of prudence are vain, and from whom the im- 
prudent expects pity and compensation : for truly he who has combined 
prudence and virtue needs no further recompense, — he finds it rich and 
overflowing in himself. Who would not, without a moment's hesitation, 
give everything in the world to enjoy the blessedness of being perfectly 
good ? A time may perhaps come, when all church and state religions 
may be buried and forgotten; but Poetry and Love, whose flower is true 
religion, whose fruit Virtue, must forever rule the human heart in their 
holy Tri-unity, — the adoration of God as the source of all existence, the 
admiration of nature as his high work, and love to men as our brethren. 
And this is the true doctrine of Christ, — by none more purely, touch- 
ingly, simple, and deeply expressed, although its forms and premises are 
adapted to the times in which he lived. And therefore is he become the 
seed from which the fruit of after-times shall arise ; the true Mediator, 
whose doctrine, as we must hope, will, in time, become Christianity in 
deed and in truth, and not in words alone. * * * * * 

(_Here occurs a chasm in the letters, which begin again on the 28th ] 
Capel Cerig, July 28th, late in the evening. 

As the weather cleared up, and the friends whom I expected did not 
arrive, I hastened to take advantage of the first ray of sun to penetrate 
deeper amid the mountains ; and set off about seven in the evening, in an 
Irish car drawn by one horse, for Capel Cerig. I left my servant, and 
took only a light travelling-bag containing a little linen and a change of 



308 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

clothes. — This carriage consists of an open box, standing on two wheels, 
resting on four horizontal springs, and containing two opposite benches, 
on which four persons can commodiously sit. You ascend from behind, 
as the door is between the wheels ; — the whole is very light and conve- 
nient. The moment was unusually propitious ; — nearly a week of rain 
had so swollen all the waterfalls, brooks, and rivers, that they appeared 
in their fullest beauty j trees and grass were clothed in their softest 
green, and the air was transparent and pure as crystal. I admired the 
rich masses of gay mountain flowers and heaths which grew luxuriantly 
in the clefts of the rocks, and regretted that I did not know enough of 
botany to enjoy them with more than my eye. I soon reached that sterner 
region in which flowers are rarely seen, and trees never. 

I alighted at the waterfall of Idwal to visit a little lake, which might 
serve as the entrance to Hades. 

The dreary and wild aspect of the deep mountain enclosure is really 
awful. I had read that it was possible to reach Capel Cerig from hence, 
going in a straight line over Trivaen (the mountain with basaltic co- 
lumns, of which I have spoken) and the surrounding rocks. The pas- 
sage was represented as very difficult, but surpassingly beautiful. At 
this moment I saw a shepherd descending from the mountain, and I felt 
the strongest inclination to attempt the expedition with the guide which 
chance thus so opportunely threw in my way. I got the postilion to act 
us interpreter of my wishes. The man thought it was too late, and that 
the descent on the other side by night would be hazardous. On my 
pressing him further, he said, however, that there would be a moon, 
and that if I could follow him at a brisk rate, he thought we might ma- 
nage to cross the mountain in two hours, — but that there were some very 
awkward places to pass. I had tried my strength too well on Snowdon 
to shrink from the enterprise ; I therefore closed the bargain, only tak- 
ing the precaution to order the driver to wait for me an hour, lest any 
unforeseen difficulties should cause me to return, and then to drive back 
to Capel Cerig. 

The path along which we had to climb was from the outset very steep, 
and lay over a boggy soil between enormous detached masses of rock 
strewed in wild disorder. It might be about half past seven o'clock:— 
there was no trace of any beaten path ; Trivaen reared its grotesque 
peak like an embattled wall before us, nor was it easy to discover how 
we were to cross it. The mountain sheep here rendered us good ser- 
vice ; they climbed before us, and showed the often uncertain guide the 
most practicable places. After a quarter of an hour of very wearisome 
climbing, with many a giddy glance into the chasms beneath, to which, 
however, the eye became gradually familiarized, we came to a little 
swampy 'plateau' through which we were obliged to wade knee-deep in 
a bog. Here we had a beautiful view of the sea, the Isle of Man, and 
Ireland dimly appearing in the distance. 

Immediately above the bog a completely different sort of ground 
awaited us; a wall of perpendicular and compact sharp and ragged 
rocks, over which we scrambled on hands and feet. The sun had al- 
ready sunk behind a high mountain sideward of us, and reddened the 
whole wild scenery around, as well as the wall on which we hung, with 
a dark and fiery glow — one of the strangest effects of sunlight I ever be- 
held. It was like a theatrical representation of Hell. Our way now 
lay across a swollen mountain-stream, over which a fallen block of stone 
had formed a natural bridge 9 and then over bare rocks wholly unmixep 
with earth, till at length we reached the high crest which had so long 
stood right before us, and at which I expected an end of all our difficulties. 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 309 

I was therefore not a little disappointed when I saw another defile before 
me, which we must first descend and then climb up the opposite side, 
for no human foot could have found a sure hold on the semicircular edge 
of the crest, across which lay a shorter road. 

We had now entirely lost sight of the sea; our view lay landward, 
where the mountain region of Wales lay before us in its whole breadth ; 
peak above peak, solitary, silent, and mighty. The sterile valley be- 
neath us was filled with giant stones hurled about in wild disorder ; and 
truly the game which was here played, with rocks for balls, must have 
been a spectacle for Gods. While I stood lost in contemplation of this 
chaos, I heard a shrill reiterated cry close to me, and looking up saw 
two majestic eagles soaring over our heads with outstretched wings — a 
rarity in these mountains. Welcome faithful birds* of my house, ex- 
claimed I, — here, where there are only hard rocks, but no false hearts; are 
you come to carry me, like the Roc bird, into some valley of diamonds? 
or do you bring me tidings from my far distant home? The noble 
creatures seemed as if they answered me by their cries ; but unfortu- 
nately I am not skilled in the language of birds : and they left me, 
wheeling higher, till they disappeared among the columns of Trivaen. 
I look upon the repeated attentions paid me by birds of prey as a good 
omen. It was extremely inconvenient that I could no more speak with my 
guide than with the eagles, for he understood not a word of English. We 
could therefore only converse by signs. After we had for some time 
descended with comparative ease, he pointed to a place to which we must 
now turn our steps: — we had arrived at the 'bad passage.' This con- 
sisted of a perfectly perpendicular wall, certainly not less than six hun- 
dred feet in depth ; and above it a scarcely less steep ascent of earth, 
washed over by the rain, and strewed with small loose stones. Across 
this we were to make our way — a distance of fifteen hundred paces. 
Formerly, I should have regarded this undertaking as impracticable j 
but being urged by necessity, after the first few steps 1 found it quite easy. 

It certainly looked most, terrific, but the numerous stones and the moist 
soft earth afforded a firmer footing than might have been expected : in- 
deed these things, even in an unexaggerated description, always sound 
more perilous than they are. It is very true that one false step would 
cause inevitable destruction ; but this is exactly what one takes good 
care not to set : so a man must be drowned in the water, if he leaves off 
swimming. Any body who can walk, and has a steady head, may per- 
form such exploits without the slightest danger. Twilight now began to 
close in ; the mountains became dim and indistinct ; under us lay, like 
steaming cauldrons, the misty lakes of Capel Cerig and Beddgelert. We 
had reached the highest point, and hastened as much as possible to reach 
the former lake. We waded through another bog, and scrambled down 
over rocks, till we came to the part of our way which looked the least 
difficult, but was in fact the most fatiguing ; — a firm and smooth hill 
covered with turf, very steep, and with a substratum of rock which in 
many parts presented itself at the surface in broad smooth shelves. 
Down this declivity we rather slid than walked ; and the effort was at 
length followed by such pain in the knees, that both the guide and I fell 
several times, though without sustaining any hurt. The lofty moun- 
tains around us had hitherto concealed the moon, which now arose large 
and bloody-red above their wavy line. We soon lost her again. Near 
our journey's end she once more rose upon us, golden, clear, and small, 

* Wappenvbgel (armorial-biids,) an expression which appears affected in English, though 
the passage is unintelligible without it. — Transl. 



3 JO LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

mirrored in the stil! waters of the lake, on whose shores the inn stood. 
The last part of the way lay along a level high-road, and offered such a 
contrast to what had preceded it, that I felt as if I could have walked 
along it sleeping. It was as if my steps were not the result of any act 
of the will, but rather of some mechanical power; like children's toys, 
which when wound up run round and round the table without stopping. 
We completed our expedition in an hour and three quarters; and proud 
of my achievement, I entered Capel Cerig, where my host would hardly 
believe we had accomplished the distance by night in so short a time.— 
I had lived such an indolent, effeminate life for some years, that I fan- 
cied myself grown almost old; but to-day's experience proved, to my 
great joy, that I want nothing but stimulus and opportunity, to recover 
all the freshness and vigour of my bodily and mental powers; — danger 
and difficulty had always been my most kindred element when fate threw 
them in my way. 

My driver had not yet returned with the carriage, and I was obliged to 
equip myself in the clothes of my portly host, in which I now doubtless 
cut a very extraordinary figure ; while my own are drying at the kitchen- 
fire ; and I am alternately occupied in writing to you, and in drinking tea. 

To-morrow morning I shall leave my pillow at four o'clock, — guess 
in search of what ; — the rock of the enchanter Merlin, where he prophe- 
sied to king Vortigern the history of coming times, and where his won- 
drous treasures, the golden throne and diamond sword, still lie buried in 
its hidden caves. Here is a new and most safe object of speculation to 
the mining companies of London and Elberfield. 

Beddgelert, July 29th, early. 

Admire Merlin's vale with me, dearest Julia. It is indeed enchanting ; 
but its rocks — Dinas Emrys, I shall long remember. But let me begin at 
the beginning. I went to bed at one, rose again punctually at four, and 
in ten minutes was ready to start: for as soon as you bid adieu to servants 
and luxuries, everything goes at an easier and quicker pace. The fine 
weather had given place to the usual mists of these mountains ; and I 
was glad to avail myself of my mountain walking-stick of yesterday in 
its other capacity of umbrella, as well as of that venerable cloak, the 
honoured relic of my warlike services against France, which I was once 
forced to throw out of a balloon, together with all other ballast, to avoid 
ending my aerial excursion in the water. 

At first the road was dull and uninteresting enough, till we came to the 
foot of Snowdon, which reared its uncovered head majestically above the 
clouds, by which we were encircled and bedewed. Its aspect is peculiarly 
grand and sublime from this point. It rises in nearly perpendicular 
height from the vale of Gwynant, which commences here. This richly 
watered valley unites the most luxuriant vegetation with the sublimest 
views. The loftiest mountains of Wales are grouped around it in mani- 
fold forms and colours. The river which flows through it forms, in its 
course, two lakes, not broad but deep, the valley being narrow through- 
out, a circumstance which greatly contributes to enhance the colossal 
air of the mountains which enclose it. In the richest part of it a mer- 
chant of Chester has a park, which he justly calls Elysium. 

On a high and thickly wooded ridge, out of whose deep verdure rocks 
which rival each other in wildness of form break forth, overlooking the 
mountain river which flows through a beautiful stretch of meadows, stands 
the unpretending and lovely villa. Below lies the lake, behind which 
stands Merlin's solitary rock, apparently closing the valley, which here 
makes an abrupt turn. 

Dinas Emrys is doubly impressed on my memory: first, for its ro- 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 311 

mantic beauty ; secondly, because on it I literally hung between life and 
death. Although not above four or five hundred feet high, it is considered 
accessible only on one side. I had taken a little boy with me as guide, 
but when we reached the spot he seemed to know very little about the 
matter. The way which he took through an oak copse appeared to me 
from the first suspicious, from its uncommon steepness ; but he tran- 
quillized my fears in broken English, and I could do nothing but follow 
the little fellow, (who sprang before me like a chamois,) as well as I could. 
Merlin appeared to frown upon us: a violent wind had arisen, and the 
sun, which had shone upon us for a moment, imbedded himself behind 
black clouds; while the long wet grass which hung over the blocks of 
stone made climbing very dangerous. This did not much impede the 
barefooted little boy, but was a serious obstacle to my limbs, somewhat 
stiff from my yesterday's exploits. The higher we went, the steeper the 
rocks became ; often we were obliged to swing ourselves up by the help 
of the shrubs which grew out of the clefts, avoiding as well as we could 
to look behind us. At length I observed that the boy himself was quite 
irresolute, and creeping on his belly looked anxiously around. We now 
wriggled right and left through some clefts, and suddenly found ourselves 
standing on the peak of a smooth and lofty wall, with scarcely room to 
set our feet, and above us a similar wall, out of which grew some tufts of 
grass. The summit of this appeared to overtop the whole. 

The prospect was not encouraging: the child began to cry, and I con- 
sidered not without some uneasy feelings what was to be done. Willingly, 
I confess, should I have climbed down again, and left Merlin's rock to 
witches and gnomes, if I had thought it possible to descend without diz- 
ziness, or indeed to find the way by which we had ascended. Before us 
there lay no chance of escape but by scaling the wall as we best might. 
The boy, as the lightest and most practised, went first; I followed him 
step by step, holding by the slight support of tufts of grass, clinging with 
hand and foot in every little cleft; and thus hanging between heaven and 
earth we reached the giddy summit in safety. I was quite exhausted. 
A more daring climber may laugh at me; but I honestly confess to you, 
that when a tuft of grass or root seemed unsteady, and threatened to give 
way before I had raised myself up by it, I felt what terror is. As I lay 
now panting with fatigue and fright on the turf, I saw a large black lizard 
couched just opposite to me, who appeared to look at me with scornful, 
malicious eyes, as if he were the enchanter himself in disguise. I was 
however glad to see him, and in high good humour at having got out of 
the scrape so cheaply; though I thought fit to threaten the little imp, 
who like a mischievous gnome had enticed me into such perils, with all 
sorts of terrible punishments, if he did not make out the right way back. 
In his absence I examined the remains of the area, as it is here called, — 
the ruined walls, where 

" Prophetic Merlin sat, when to the British king 
The changes long to come auspiciously he told." 

I grubbed among the stones, I crept into the fallen caverns — but from 
me, as from others, the treasures remained hidden; — the moment has not 
yet arrived. As a compensation, the boy reappeared jumping gaily along, 
and boasting of the beauty of the way, which he had at length found. 

If it was not quite so smooth and easy as that of sin, it was at least 
not like the last, inaccessible. Merlin's displeasure, however, pursued 
us in the shape of torrents of rain, which obliged me again to send my 
clothes to the kitchen fire, at which I am reposing. 

The inn, completely shaded by high trees, is most delightful. Just 
before my window is a fresh-mown meadow, behind which a huge moun- 



312 LETTEKS ON ENGLAND, 

tain rears itself, covered from top to bottom with deep purple heather, 
glowing like the morning sky, in spite of the sheets of rain and of the 
clouded heavens. While my dinner was preparing, (for I dine like Su- 
warroff at eight o'clock in the morning), a harper, the humble relic of 
Welsh bards, played on his curious and primitive instrument. He is 
blind, and so is his dog, who stands behind him on his hind legs, waiting 
with unwearied patience, till one bestows a piece of money on his master, 
and of bread on himself. Beddgelert means M Gelert's grave," bed and 
grave being poetically expressed in Welsh by the same word. Gelert was 
no other than a greyhound, whose history is, however, so touching, that 
as soon as my 'dejeune dinatoire' is removed, I will tell it you. 

Caernarvon, July soih. 

I had kept the harper playing during the whole time of dinner at Bedd- 
gelert, and had amused myself, like a child, with his dog, with whom it 
had become so much a second nature to stand on two legs, that he would 
have been a better representative of man than Plato's plucked fowl. 
The perfect ease of his attitude, together with his serious countenance, 
had something so whimsical, that one had only to imagine him in a pet- 
ticoat, with a snuff-box in his paw, to take him for a blind old lady. 

In the same proportion as this dog resembles the heroic Gelert, do the 
modern Welsh seem to resemble their ancestors. Without the energy 
or activity of the English, still less animated by the fire of the Irish, 
they vegetate, poor and obscure, between both. They have, however, 
retained the simplicity of mountaineers, and they are neither so rude and 
boorish, nor do they cheat so impudently, as the Swiss. * Point d'argent, 
point de Suisse' is not yet applicable here. On the contrary, living is 
so cheap that bankrupt Englishmen often retire hither: I am assured 
that a man may have good board and lodging, the use of a poney, and 
leave to shoot, for fifty guineas a year. 

The environs of Beddgelert are the last continuation of the magnifi- 
cent valley which I have described to you. It was now alive with a hun- 
dred waterfalls, which dashed foaming and white as milk from every 
chasm and gorge. About a mile and a half in the rear of the village the 
rocks stand so near together that there is scarce room for road and river 
to run side by side. Here rises the Devil's bridge, and closes the valley, 
or rather the defile. You now again approach the sea, and the country 
assumes a gayer character. In two hours I reached the great resort of 
tourists, Tan y Bvvlch, whose chief attraction is a beautiful park extend- 
ing over two rocky mountains overgrown with lofty wood, between which 
gushes a mountain stream forming numerous cascades. The walks are 
admirably cut, leading, through the best chosen gradations and changes, 
to the various points of view; from which you catch now an island in 
the sea, now a precipice, with a foaming waterfall, now a distant peak, 
or solitary group of rock under the night of primeval oaks. 

I wandered for above an hour along these walks ; but was greatly sur- 
prised to see them in so neglected a state, that in most places I had to 
wade through the deep grass, and to toil through the rank and over- 
grown vegetation. Even the house seemed in decay. I afterwards 
learned that the proprietor had lost his fortune at play in London. 

As I feared I should spend too much time here, I gave up my visit to 
Festiniog and its celebrated waterfall, hired an airy * Sociable' (a sort 
of light four-seated * caleche' without a roof) from my host, and set out 
for Tremadoc, distant about ten miles. I was richly rewarded, although 
the road is the very worst I have yet met with in Great Britain; for 
some miles it runs in the sea, that is to say, through a part of it which 
Mr; Maddox, a rich land owner here, has cut off by a monstrous dam; 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 



313 



he has thus redeemed from the ocean a tract of fertile land equal in ex- 
tent to a rittcrgut (a knight's fee). From this dam, twenty feet high 
and two miles long, you command the most magnificent views : the drain- 
ed land forms a nearly regular semicircle, whose walls appear to be 
formed by the whole amphitheatre of the mountains. Here the art ol 
man has drawn aside the veil from the bottom of the deep; and instead 
of the ship, the plough now tracks the broad expanse. But on the left, 
the ocean still hides all the secrets of " the fathomless profound" under 
his liquid mountains. The line of coast is terminated at no great dis- 
tance by a bold headland, on which the ruins of Harlech Castle, with its 
five mouldering towers, overhang the waves. In front, at the end of the 
dam, a quiet cheerful valley opens before you, cradled amid lofty moun- 
tains, with a small but busy harbour, near which Tremadoc seems to 
grow out of the rock. 

In spite of all this, you, my Julia, would hardly bring yourself to ride 
across this dam, which is indeed better fitted for foot-passengers. It is, 
as I have already said, twenty feet high, and consists of rude, angular, 
and jagged blocks of stone, heaped on one another. The road at the top 
is only four ells wide, without any thing like a railing. On one side the 
breakers dash furiously against it ; and if your horses shyed at them, 
you would infallibly be thrown on the points of rocks which bristle like 
pikes on the other. The mountain horses alone can cross such a road 
•with safety, as they seem to estimate the danger and to be familiar with 
it : nevertheless a carriage is seldom seen here. Wagons of stone cross 
the dam on a railroad, which makes it still worse for all other vehicles. 
Tremadoc itself stands on land formerly redeemed by a similar process. 
The resemblance which this land, reclaimed some centuries since, has 
to the sandy banks of northern Germany, which were gained from the 
sea perhaps a thousand years ago, is very striking : the little town itself 
and its inhabitants — as if like soil produced like character of people—as 
completely resembled the melancholy villages of that country. It is 
dreary, neglected, and dirty ; the men ill-clad j the inn not better than 
a Silesian one, nor less filthy ; and, that nothing might be wanting, the 
post-horses out at field, so that I had to wait an hour and a half for them. 
When they appeared, their condition, the wretched state of their tackle, 
and the dress of the postilion, were all perfectly true to their model. 
This applies only to the part redeemed from the sea : as soon as you 
have gone four or five miles further, and reached the surrounding 
heights, the country changes to the fruitful and the beautiful. It had, 
indeed, lost its wild and gigantic character ; but after so long a stay 
among the rocks, this change refreshed me, especially as the most bril- 
liant and lovely evening shone over the landscape. 

The sun gleamed so brightly on the emerald meadows, woody hills 
lay so peacefully as if at rest around the crystal stream, and scattered 
cottages hung so temptingly on their shady sides, that I felt as if I could 
have staid there forever. I had dismounted from the carriage ; and 
throwing myself on the soft moss under a large nut-tree, I gave myself 
up with delight to my dreams. The evening light glittered like sparks 
through the thick-leaved branches, and a hundred gay insects sported in 
its ruddy light ; while the gentle wind sighed in its topmost boughs, in 
melodies which are understood and felt by the initiated. 

The carriage arrived. Once more I cast a longing glance on the dark 
blue sea ; once more I drank in the fragrance of the mountain flowers, 
and the horses bore the loiterer quickly to the plains. 

From this point the romantic wholly ceases ; I rode along a well-tilled 
country till the towers of Caernarvon castle rose in the twilight above 

40 



314 



LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



the trees. — Here I intend to rest some days, having performed seventy- 
four English miles to-day, partly on foot, between four in the morning 
and ten at night. 

August \st. 

This morning I received letters from you, which make me melancho- 
ly. — Yes, indeed, you are right ; it was a hard destiny which troubled 
the calmest and cheerfullest happiness, the most perfect mutual under- 
standing, and tore asunder the best suited minds (both too in the full 
enjoyment of their respective tastes and pursuits), as a storm troubles 
and tears up the peaceful sea. At onetime, indeed, this was well-nigh 
destruction to both ; condemning the one to restless wandering, the 
other to comfortless solitude; both to grief, anxiety, and vain longings. 
But was not this storm necessary for the dwellers on the deep ? would 
not, perhaps, the stagnant and motionless air have been yet more de- 
structive to them ? Let us not therefore give way to excessive grief: let 
us never regret the past, which is always vain ; let us only stretch for- 
ward to what is better, and even in the worst exigencies let us be true 
to ourselves. How often are the evils created by our own imaginations 
the hardest to bear ! What burning pains are caused by wounded vani- 
ty! what agonizing shame by notions of false honour! I am not much 
the better for perceiving this, and am often tempted to wish for Falstaff's 
philosophy. Nature has however endowed me with one precious gift, 
which I would most gladly share with you. In every situation, I prompt- 
ly, and as it were by instinct, discover the good side of things and enjoy 
it, be it what it may, with a freshness of feeling, a childlike Christmas- 
day delight in trifles, which I am convinced will never grow old in me. 

And in what situation does not the good, in the long run, outweigh 
the evil ? — this persuasion is the ground-work of my piety. The gifts 
of God are infinite ; and we might almost say we are inexcusable if we 
are not happy. How often indeed we have it in our power to be so, every 
one may see, who looks back at his past life ; — he cannot escape the con- 
viction that he might easily have turned almost every evil to good. As 
I have long ago and often said to you, We are the makers of our own 
destiny. It is true, however, that ourselves we have not made, and 
therein lies a wide unknown Past, concerning which we perplex our spi- 
rits in vain : our speculations can lead to no practical end. Let every 
one only do his utmost to be of good courage, and to regard the outward 
things of this world, without exception, as of light moment, — for the 
things of this world are really light and unimportant, in good as in evil. 
There is no better weapon against unhappiness; only we must not on 
that account cross our hands, and do nothing. 

Your womanish fault, my dear Julia, is, in evil times to abandon your- 
self to Heaven and its assistance, as ' Deus ex machina,' with a feeble 
and helpless sort of piety. For if this assistance fails us, our ruin is 
then certain and inevitable. 

Both, pious hope and energetic action, consist perfectly well togeth- 
er, and indeed mutually aid each other. No man can doubt that the 
former greatly lightens the latter: for if that sort of piety which is com- 
mon in the world, — that confident expectation of earthly and peculiar 
protection from above, that supplication for good and against evil, — is 
merely a self-delusion, still it is a beneficent one, and perhaps grounded 
in our very nature, subject as we are to so many illusions, which, when 
they take fast hold on our minds, become to us individual truth. It ap- 
pears that our nature has the power of creating to itself a factitious re- 
ality, as a sort of auxiliary support, where reality itself is unattainable. 
Thus a pious confidence in special interpositions, though but a form of 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 315 

superstition; gives courage. A man who goes into battle with a talis- 
man which he believes renders him invulnerable, will see bullets rain 
around him with indifference. But still more powerful and exulting is 
the enthusiasm excited by ideas which place us above the external world; 
thus religious fanatics have frequently been seen animated by a spirit 
which enabled them to brave the most horrible bodily tortures with tru- 
ly miraculous power : — thus do the afflicted and oppressed create to 
themselves blissful hopes of a future state of felicity, which indemnify 
them even here. All these are effects of the potent instinct of self-pre- 
servation in its widest sense, — which brings the abovenamed power of 
our nature into operation wherever it is needed. Hence, lastly, in fee- 
ble characters, those death-bed conversions, useless indeed in themselves, 
but tranquillizing. 

Every being must pay his tribute to this want in one form or other : 
every one creates to himself his earthly god ; and thus is the descent of 
God to us under human attributes ever repeated. 

The conception of the all-loving Father is certainly the noblest and 
most beautiful of these images, nor can the human imagination rise high- 
er. And it must be conceded, that the mere idea of the Highest Prin- 
ciple of all things, exalted, sublimated, and I might almost say, evapo- 
rated, to the Incomprehensible, the Unutterable, no longer warms the hu- 
man heart, conscious of its own weakness, with the same fervent emotion. 

It often appears to me that all which is fashioned by nature or by man, 
may be reduced to two primary elements, Love and Fear, which might 
be called the Divine and the Earthly principles. All thoughts, feelings, 
passions and actions arise from these: either from one, or from a mix- 
ture of the two. Love is the divine cause of all things ; — Fear seems to 
be their earthly preserver. The words, * Ye shall love God and fear him,' 
must be so interpreted, or they have no meaning ; for absolute and un- 
mixed love cannot fear, because it is the absence of all self-regarding 
thoughts and feelings ; and indeed, if it truly inspired us, would make us 
one with God and the universe; and we have moments in which we feel this. 

When I use this notion as a standard or measure by which to try all 
human actions, I find it constantly confirmed. Love fertilizes, — fear pre- 
serves and destroys. In all nature, too, I see the principle of self-preser- 
vation or fear, (it is one and the same,) in what we call, according to 
our system of morals, crime or wickedness ; that is, founded on the an- 
nihilation of another's individuality. One race lives by the destruction of 
another ; life is fed by death, to all eternity of reproduction and reappear- 
ance, which, precisely by this kind of unity, continues in perpetual change. 

It is also worthy of note, that this fear, although so indispensably ne- 
cessary to all of us for our earthly support and preservation, is even 
here so little esteemed by our diviner part, that scarcely any possible 
crime is covered with such deep contempt as cowardice. 

On the other hand, nothing so effectually conquers fear, as a great and 
lofty idea springing from the dominion of love. A man inspired by such 
a feeling, even hurries along others with him ; and whole nations de- 
vote themselves under its influence, although nothing earthly can re- 
main pure from all admixture of the baser principle. Fear has reference 
to the future in time and space : Love, to the present, eternally ; and 
knows neither time nor space. Love is endless and blessed — Fear dies 
an eternal death. 

K Park, August 2nd. 

On my return to Bangor, I made acquaintance with the possessor of 

Castle, (the black Saxon castle which I described to you,) a man 

to whom I am strongly attracted by our common building mania. 



316 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

It is now seven years since the castle was begun, in which time 20,000/. 
have been spent upon it; and it will probably take four years more to 
complete it. During all this time, this wealthy man lives with his 
family in a humble hired cottage in the neighbourhood, with a small 
establishment; he feasts once a week on the sight of his fairy castle, 
which, after the long continuance of such simple habits, he will proba- 
bly never bring himself to inhabit. It appeared to give him great plea- 
sure to show and explain everything to me ; and I experienced no less 
from his enthusiasm, which was agreeable and becoming in a man 
otherwise cold. 

In compliance with an invitation which I had received in London, 
and which had since been pressingly renewed, 1 came hither yesterday 
morning. My road lay at first through fertile fields, between the lake 
and the foot of the mountains ; sometimes crossed by a sudden defile or 
glen, and by rapid brooks hurrying to the sea. On Penman Mawr, the 
road, which is blasted in the rock, contracts into a narrow and fearful 
pass, the left side of which overhangs the sea at a perpendicular height 
of five hundred feet. A most necessary parapet wall guards carriages. 
I sat on the imperial, a place which I frequently take in fine weather, 
and enjoyed the wide sea-view in full freedom: the wind meanwhile sigh- 
ed and whistled in every variety of tone, and I with difficulty kept my 
cloak about me. In an hour I reached Conway, whose site is most beau- 
tiful. Here stands the largest of those strong castles which Edward 
built, and Cromwell demolished. It is likewise the most remarkable for 
the picturesque beauty both of its position and structure. 

The outer walls, though ruinous, are still standing, with all their 
towers, to the number, it is said, of fifty-two. The whole town, a strange, 
but not unpicturesque mixture of old and new, is contained within the 
enclosure of these walls. A chain-bridge, with pillars in the form of 
Gothic towers, has lately been thrown over the river Conway, on whose 
banks the castle stands : it increases the grandeur and strangeness of the 
scene. The surrounding country is magnificent : woody hills rise oppo- 
site to the ruins, and behind them appears a yet higher range. Numerous 
country-houses adorn the sides of the hills ; among others a most lovely 
villa, which is for sale, and bears the seducing name of ' Contentment.' 

In the castle, the imposing remains of the banqueting-hall, with its 
two enormous fire-places are still visible, as is also the king's chamber. 
In the queen's closet there is an altar of beautiful workmanship, in tole- 
rably good preservation, and a splendid oriel window. The town also 
contains very remarkable old buildings, with strange fantastic devices 
in wood. One of these houses was built, as a tombstone in the church 
testifies, in the fourteenth century, by a man named Hooke, the forty- 
first son of his father — a rare instance in Christendom. A large child 
in swaddling-clothes, carried by a stork, was carved in oak, and occurred 
in various parts of the building. 

Conway is a laudable place in a gastronomic point of view: it abounds 
with a fish, the firm yet tender flesh of which is delicious. Its name is 
Place,* as who should say, Place for me, who am the worthiest ! And 
truly I shall always be glad to give him the place of honour at my table. 

I quitted Conway early, driving across the chain-bridge, which serves 
as a most noble * point d'appui' to the ruined castle. The monstrous 
chains lose themselves so romantically in the solid rock-like towers, that 
one would scarcely be reminded of their newness, if there were not un- 

* A warning to all makers of puns am\jeau de mots to know their tools. Our author pro- 
bably is still in blissful ignorance of the i which spoils his joke. — Trans. 



IUELAND, AND FRANCE. 317 

luckily a tollhouse on the other side, built exactly in the form of a dimi- 
nutive castle, and looking like a harlequin apeing the other. 

The nearer you approach to St. Asaph, the softer the character of the 
country becomes. In a semicircular bay, which the eye can scarcely 
traverse, the tranquil sea washes fruitful fields and meadows, richly 
studded with towns and villages. All the country gentlemen seem 
lovers of the Gothic style of architecture. The taste is carried so far, 
that even an inn by the road-side was provided with portcullis, loop- 
holes and battlements, though there was no garrison to defend it, ex- 
cept geese and hens. Don Quixote might have been excused here ; and 
the host would not do amiss to hang out the knight of the sorrowful 
countenance, with couched lance and brazen helmet, as his sign. At 
some distance I saw what appeared to be a ridge of hills crowned with 
a Gothic castle : — it had such a striking aspect that I was duped into 
dismounting and climbing the toilsome ascent. It was at once ridicu- 
lous and vexatious to find that the kernel of the jest was only a small 
and insignificant house, and that which had attracted me were mere 
walls, which, built on the summits and declivities of the mountain, re- 
presented towers, roofs, and large battlements, half hidden in wood ; 
but served, in fact, only to enclose a kitchen and fruit garden. A lucky 
dog, a shopkeeper, who had suddenly become rich, had built this harmless 
fortress, as I was told, in two years — a perfect satire on the ruling taste. 

Towards evening I arrived at the house of my worthy Colonel, a true 
Englishman, in the best sense of the word. He and his amiable family 
received me in the friendliest manner. Country gentlemen of his class, 
who are in easy circumstances (with us they would be thought rich,) 
and fill a respectable station in society ; who are not eager and anxious 
pursuers of fashion in London, but seek to win the affection of their neigh- 
bours and tenants; whose hospitality is not mere ostentation; whose 
manners are neither ' exclusive' nor outlandish; but who find their dig- 
nity in a domestic life polished by education and adorned by affluence, 
and in the observance of the strictest integrity; — such form the most 
truly respectable class of Englishmen. In the great world of London, 
indeed, they play an obscure part ; but on the wide stage of humanity, 
one of the most noble and elevated that can be allotted to man. Unfor- 
tunately, however, the predominance and the arrogance of the English 
aristocracy is so great, and that of fashion yet so much more absolute 
and tyrannous, that such families, if my tribute of praise and admiration 
were ever to fall under their eye, would probably feel less flattered by 
it, than they would be if I enumerated them among the leaders of * ton.' 

To what a pitch this weakness reaches, even amongst the worthiest 
people in this country, is not to be believed without actual observation 
and experience ; — without seeing all classes of society affected by it in 
a most ludicrous manner. — But I have written you enough on this sub- 
ject from the ' foyer' of European Aristocracy, and will not therefore 
repeat myself. It is, moreover, high time to close this letter, otherwise 
I fear my correspondence will be too long even for you ; for though the 
heart is never weary, the head puts in other claims. 

But I know how much I may trust to your indulgence in this point. 

Your ever truly devoted L. 



LETTER XXVIII. 

K Park, August 4th, 1828. 

My Dearest Friend, 

I am in most agreeable quarters. The manner of living is ' comfort- 
able' the society cordial, ' la chere excellente,' and the freedom, as it is 



318 LETTEUS ON ENGLAND, 

every where in the country, perfect. Yesterday I took a very agreeable 
ride of some twenty miles on an untireable horse of my host's ; — for dis- 
tances disappear before the excellence ofthehorses and of the roads: — I 
must tell you all I saw. 

I rode first to the small town of St. Asaph to look at the cathedral, 
which is adorned with a beautiful window of modern painted glass. 
Many coats of arms were extremely well executed, and the artist had 
the good sense to avoid the common error of endeavouring to represent 
objects not suited to his art, which requires masses of colour and no 
delicate and floating shades. To obtain a more perfect knowledge of 
the country, I ascended the tower. At a distance of about twelve miles 
I espied a church-like building on the summit of a high mountain, and 
asked the clerk what it was. He replied, in broken English, that it 
was ' the king's tabernacle,' and that whoever would pass seven years 
without washing himself, cutting his nails, or shaving his beard, would 
be allowed to live there ; and at the expiration of the seventh year he 
would have a right to go to London, where the king must give him a 
pension and make him a ' gentleman.' The man believed this wild story 
implicitly, aud swore to its truth ; * Voila ce que e'est que la foi.' 

I inquired afterwards the true state of the affair, and heard the origin 
of this history ; namely, that the building was erected by the province, 
or ' county,' to commemorate the jubilee of the last king's reign, and had 
stood empty ever since: but that a wag had advertised a considerable 
reward in the newspapers, to any man who would fulfil the above-named 
conditions. The common people had mixed up this strange ordeal with 
the 'tabernacle' of King George III. 

I descended the towers, and now you may see me galloping at the 
foot of some gentle slopes, till I reach a rocky isolated hill, on which 
stands Denbigh Castle. The side of the hill is covered with the ruinous 
houses and huts of the miserable little town, and you climb through its 
narrow lanes to the top. A gentleman, who afterwards declared him- 
self to be the surgeon of the town, very kindly showed me the way, and 
did the honours of the ruins with great politeness. Here is a sort of 
casino most romantically situated within the walls, and a very pretty 
flower-garden, commanding a beautiful view. The rest of this vast edi- 
fice offers only a neglected labyrinth of walls, standing amid the rank 
luxuriance of grass and thistles. Every third year, notwithstanding, a 
great national festival is held on this spot; — the meeting of Welsh 
bards, who, like the old German Minnesingers, repair hither to a trial 
of skill. The victor wins a golden cup ; and a chorus of a hundred harps 
resounds to his fame amid these ruins. The meeting will take place in 
three months, when the Duke of Sussex is expected to be present. 

Following a ravine, I now entered a most lovely valley. Deep wood 
overshadowed me ; rocks stretched out their mossy heads, like old ac- 
quaintances — from the branches ; the wild torrent foamed, leaping and 
dancing amid the flowers; and the golden-green of the meadows here 
and there gleamed through the shade. I wandered for some hours in 
this place, and then climbed the heights by a weary foot-path, to disco- 
ver where I was. I stood immediately above the bay and the broad 
tranquil sea, which appeared to be nearer to the gentle descent in front 
than it really was. After some effort, I espied among the groups of 
trees on the plain the house of K — park, and trotting briskly onward, 
reached it in time to dress for dinner. 

Jin gust 5 th. 

I walked this morning, while all the rest of the family were still in 
bed, with the charming little Fanny, the youngest daughter of the house 



IltELAND, AND FRANCE. 319 

who is not yet ' out.'* She took me round the park and garden, and 
showed me her ' dairy' and ' aviary.' 

I told you once before, that the dairy is one of the principal decora- 
tions of an English park, and stands by itself, quite away from the cow- 
house. It is generally an elegant pavilion, adorned with fountains, mar- 
ble walls, and rare and beautiful porcelain ; and its .vessels, large and 
small, filled with the most exquisite milk and its products, in all their 
varieties. There can be no better place of refreshment after a walk. It 
is of course surrounded by a flower-garden, which the English love to 
attach to all their buildings. In th'n, the mineral rivalled the vegetable 
kingdom in brilliancy and beauty of colour. The proprietor has a share 
in the principal copper mines in Anglesea, and little mountains of ore, 
glittering with red, blue, and green, formed a gorgeous bed for rare and 
curious plants. 

The aviary, which elsewhere is filled with gold pheasants and other 
foreign birds, was here more usefully tenanted ; and was exclusively de- 
voted to cocks and hens, geese, ducks, peacocks, and pigeons. It was 
however, from its extraordinary cleanliness and nice adaptation, a very 
pretty and agreeable sight. German housewives, listen and wonder ! 
Twice a-day are the yards, which are provided with the most beautiful 
receptacles of water, — the separate houses, pigeon-holes. Sec, — twice 
a-day arc they cleaned : the straw nests of the hens were so pretty j the 
perches on which the fowls roost, so smooth and clean ; the water in the 
stone basins, which served as duck-ponds, so clear ; the barley and the 
boiled rice (equal to Parisian * riz au lait') so tempting — that one thought 
one's self in the Paradise of fowls. They enjoyed, too, the freedom of 
Paradise : here were no clipped wings ; and a little grove of high trees, 
close by their house, formed their pleasure-ground. Most of them were 
still poised in air, waving to and fro on the topmost boughs, when we 
arrived: but scarcely did they espy the rosy little Fanny tripping to- 
wards them, with dainties in her apron, like a beneficent fairy, than they 
flew down in a tumultuous cloud, and ran to her feet, pecking and flut- 
tering. I felt a sort of pastoral sensibility come over me, and turned 
homewards, to get rid of my fit of romance before breakfast. But now 
the children's gardens were to be visited, and a sort of summer house, 
and heaven knows what 5 — in short, we were too late, and got a scold- 
ing. Miss Fanny exclaimed, with true English pathos, — 

" We do but row, 
And we are steer'd by fate ;" 

in the words of our proverb, Der Menseh denkt Gott lenkt. Yes, indeed, 
thought I, the little philosopher is right : things always turn out differ- 
ently from what one intends, even in such small events as these. 

After dinner I mounted my horse again. I sought the most untracked 
ways in the wildest mountain country on the land side, frequently fording 
the rapid stream, and revelling in the most beautiful and striking scenery. 
Here and there I met a country girl working in the fields. They are 
strikingly pretty in the singular costume which sets off their fine persons 
to the greatest advantage. They are moreover shy as roes, and chaste 
as vestals. Every thing shows the mountain character ; my horse 

* " To come out," as applied to young girls in England, means to go into the world. Pa- 
rents sometimes let them wait for this happiness till they are twenty, or even older. Till 
then, they learn the world only from novels ; in later life they consequently often act upon 
them, where the principles of domestic virtue (for there is such a thing now and then in Eng- 
land) have not been deeply and firmly laid. — Editor. 



320 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

among the rest: — unwearied as a machine of steel, he gallops over the 
stones, up hill and down ; leaps with undisturbed composure over the 
gates which continually intercept my way across the fields, and tires me 
long before he feels the least fatigue himself. This, to me, is the true 
pleasure of riding; I love to traverse mile after mile of country which I 
had never seen before, where I know not whither I am going, and must 
find out my way back as I can. 

To-day I came upon a park, in which wooden statues painted white con- 
trasted strangely with the sublimity of nature. No human being was 
visible ; only hundreds of rabbits put their heads out of the holes in the 
side of the hill, or coursed rapidly across the road. All sorts of strange 
and curious devices marked the proprietor as an original. The only thing 
that pleased me was a dark fir grove, surrounded by a belt of bright crim- 
son mallows. I at length reached the top, a bare hill, and went out as 
I had come in, through a gate, which fell to of itself. The same solitude 
reigned throughout, and the enchanted castle was soon far behind me. 

Bangor, August 8th. 
I was to stay some weeks at K park : but you know my restless- 
ness ; uniformity, even of the good, soon wearies me. I therefore took 
leave of my kind friends, — made a visit of some hours, instead of days, 
to another country-gentleman who had invited me, — saw a sun-set from 
the ruins of Conway Castle, — ate a plaice, and returned to my head- 
quarters, which I now leave for ever. I am unfortunately not very well, 
my chest seems somewhat the worse for my late fatigues, and frequently 
gives me great pain; * mais n' importe." 

Craig y Don, August 9th, early. 

Do you recollect this name ? It is the beautiful villa which I described 
to you. I have since become acquainted with its amiable possesor, whose 
friendly invitation to spend my last night in Wales with him I could not 
resist. The pain in my chest prevented my taking more than short walks 
in the garden, with the son of my host; and the attempt to climb a hill in 
the neighbourhood made me so ill that I was obliged to amuse myself 
after dinner with reading the newspaper. In this vast desert I met with 
only one thing which I think worth quoting to you. The article treated 
of the speech from the throne, in which were the words " The Speaker is 
commanded to congratulate the people on their universal prosperity." 
This, says the writer, is too insolent, openly to make a jest of the mise- 
ries of the people. It is indeed a settled point, that truth is never to 
be expected in a speech from the throne ; and if ever a king were mad 
enough to speak the real truth on such an occasion, he must begin his 
speech, " My knaves and dupes," instead of the wonted exordium " My 
Lords and Gentlemen." 

My host is a member of the yacht club, and a passionate lover of the sea. 
Our dinner would have contented the most rigid Catholic in lent : it 
consisted entirely of fish, admirably dressed in various ways. An oyster 
bank under his windows contributed its inhabitants for our dessert ; the 
cows grazing before the house also afforded many delicacies ; and the 
hot-houses adjoining the dining-room, delicious fruits. 

Does it not do one good to think that perhaps not less than a hun- 
dred thousand persons in England are in the enjoyment of such an ex- 
istence as this ; of such substantial and comfortable luxury in their 
peaceful homes! free monarchs in the bosoms of their families, where 
they live in the security of their inviolable rights of property! Happy 
men! they are never annoyed with the oppressive missives of uncivil 



IRELAND, AiMU FRANCE. 321 

functionaries, who want to rule everything even in their drawing- 
rooms and bed-chambers, and think they have rendered the stale an 
important service when they have put the unhappy subject to an ex- 
pense of many thousand dollars in a year for unnecessary postage ; — 
who are not contented to be placed above the governed, but must place 
themselves against them; thus uniting in their own persons party and 
judge. Happy men! free from assaults on their purses, — from per- 
sonal indignities, — from the insolence of officials, eager to show their 
power by useless and frivolous vexations, — from the avidity of insa- 
tiable blood-suckers! — unrestrained masters of their own property, 
and only subject to those laws which themselves have contributed 
to make! When we reflect on this, we must confess that England, 
though not a perfect country, is a most fortunate one. We ought 
not, therefore, to be much offended at Englishmen if, feeling strongly 
the contrast between their own country and most others, they can 
never, whatever be their courtesy and kindness, get over the distance 
which separates them from foreigners. Their feeling of self-respect, 
which is perfectly just, is so powerful, that they involuntarily look 
upon us as an inferior race. Just as we, for example, in spite of all 
our German heartiness, should find it difficult to fraternize with a 
Sandwich Islander. In some centuries we shall perhaps change pla- 
ces ; but at present, unhappily, we are a long way from that.* 

Holyhead, August 9th, — Evening. 

I have had a bad night, a high fever, bad weather, and rough roads. 
The latter misery I incurred by choosing to visit the celebrated 
' Paris mines' in the Isle of Anglesea. This island is the complete 
reverse of Wales; almost entirely flat — no trees, not even a thicket 
or hedge — only field after field. The copper-mines on the coast are, 
however, interesting. My arrival having been announced by Colo- 
nel H , I was received with firing of cannon, which resounded 

wildly from the caves beneath. I collected several beautiful speci- 
mens of the splendid and many-coloured ore: the lumps are broken 
small, thrown into heaps, and set on fire like alum ore, and these 
heaps left to burn for nine months: the smoke is in part caught, 
and forms sulphur. It is curious to the uninitiated, that during this 
nine months' burning, which expels all the sulphur by the force of 
the chemical affinity created by the fire, the pure copper, which had 
before been distributed over the whole mass, is concentrated, and 
forms a little compact lump in the middle, like a kernel in a nut- 
shell. After the burning, the copper, like alum again, is washed; 
and the water used for the purpose is caught in little pools: the 
deposit in these, contains from twenty-five to forty per cent, of cop- 
per; and the remaining water is still so strongly impregnated, that 
an iron key held in it, in a few seconds assumes a brilliant copper 
colour. 

The ore is then repeatedly smelted, and at last refined; after which 
it is formed into square blocks, of a hundred pounds weight, for sale; 
or pressed by mills into sheets for sheathing vessels. A singular 

* Nothing can be more ridiculous thnn the declamation of German writers concerning 
the. poverty which reigr.s in England ; wheie, according lo them, there are only a few 
enormously rich, and crowds ol extremely indigent. It is precisely the extraordinary 
number of people of competent fortune, and the ease with which the poorest can earn, 
not only what is strictly necessary, but even some luxuries, if he chooses to work vigos- 
ously, which make England independent and happy. One must not indeed repeat alter 
the Opposition newspapers. 

41 



322 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

circumstance is observable at the founding, which is a pretty sight. 
The whole mass flows into a sand-bed or matrix, divided into eight 
or ten compartments, like an eating-trough for several animals: the 
divisions do not quite reach the height of the exterior edge; so that 
the liquid copper, which flows in at one end, as soon as the plug is 
drawn out must fill the first compartment before it reaches the 
second, and so on. Now the strange thing is, that all the pure cop- 
per which was contained in the furnace remains in this first compart- 
ment, — the others are filled with slag, which is only used for making 
roads. The reason is this; — the copper ore contains a portion of 
iron, which is magnetically affected: this holds the copper together., 
and forces it to flow out first. Now as they know pretty accurately, 
by experience, what proportion of pure copper any given mass of 
ore will contain, the size of these compartments is regulated so as 
exactly to contain it. The manager, a clever man, who spoke half 
Welsh half English, told me that he had first invented this manner 
of founding, which spared much trouble, and that he had taken out 
a patent for it. The advantages which arise from it are obvious; 
since without these divisions or compartments, the copper, even if 
it flowed out first, must afterwards have spread itself over the whole 
mass. The Russians, who in matters of trade and manufacture suf- 
fer nothing to pass neglected, soon sent a traveller hither to make 
himself master of the process. It was not in the slighest degree 
concealed from him; — indeed it is but justice to say that the masters 
of all commercial and manufacturing establishments in England are 
generally very liberal. 

While I was yet standing by the furnace, an officer made his 

appearance, and in the name of the brother of Colonel H- , who is 

likewise a colonel, and commands a Hussar regiment in this neigh- 
bourhood, invited me to dine and spend the night. I was, however, 
too tired and unwell to venture on the exploit of a mess-dinner in 
England: where, in the provinces at least, the wine is dealt out in 
right old English measure. I wished too to sail by the packet of 
to-night; and therefore gratefully declined the invitation, and took 
the road to Holyhead, where I arrived at ten o'clock. 

My usual ill luck at sea did not permit me to sail, — the night was 
so rough that the packet went off without passengers. I staid behind, 
not very unwillingly, to take another day's rest in a comfortable inn. 

August 10th. 

Ill and languid as I am, an excursion to the newly built light- 
house, four miles from hence, has given me extraordinary pleasure. 
Although the Island of Anglesea appears very flat, its picturesque 
craggy rocks rise on the western shore to a very considerable height 
above the sea. On one of these rocks, which stands out to sea, 
abrupt and isolated, is placed the light-house. This indescribably 
wild cliff' is not only perpendicular — the summit actually projects 
several hundred feet beyond the line of the base; so that it appears 
rather as if blasted by powder, than the work of nature. Treading 
on a thick carpet of yellow dwarf broom and crimson heath, you 
reach the edge of the precipice: you then descend four or five hun- 
dred steps, roughly hewn in the rock, till you come to a little bridge 
suspended on ropes; across this, holding by its net-work sides, you 
swing, as it were, over the chasm which separates this rock from the 
main land. Thousands of sea-mews wheeled around us, uttering 
their ceaseless melancholy wail to the storm. The young ones were 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 323 

just fledged, and the parent birds took advantage of the rough weather 
to exercise them. Nothing could be more graceful and interesting 
than these flying lessons. The young were easily distinguished by 
their gray colour and their yet unsteady flight; while the old ones 
hung poised sometimes for the space of a minute without moving a 
wing, as if upborne motionless by the storm. The young ones often 
rested in the crevices of the rocks, but were soon driven out to fresh 
exertions by their inexorable parents. 

The light-house is exactly like that which I have described to you 
at Flamborough Head, on the eastern coast of England, only without 
the revolving lights. The neatness of the oil-vessels, and the won- 
derful brightness of the mirror-like reflectors were here, as there, 
most admirable.^ I remarked an ingenious sort of rough-weather win- 
dow, which may be opened in the hardest gale, without trouble or 
danger of breaking; and a vertical stone staircase, like a saw, which 
saves much room. But I cannot make you understand either with- 
out a drawing. 

Dublin, Aug. 1 \th. 

A more unprosperous voyage it is hardly possible to have. I was 
ten hours tossed about, sick to death. The heat, the disgusting 
smell of the steam-boiler, the universal sickness, — it was a frightful 
night — a picture of human misery, worthy of Carl of Carlsberg. In 
a longer voyage one gets hardened, and many new sources of plea- 
sure compensate for privations ; but short voyages, which show only 
the dark side of the picture, are iDy greatest aversion. Thank God 
it's over, and I once more feel firm ground under me; though I 
sometimes think Ireland rocks a little. 

Evening. 

This country has more resemblance to Germany than to England. 
That universal and almost over-refined industry and culture disap- 
pears here, and with it, alas! English neatness. The houses and 
streets have a dirty air, although Dublin is adorned with many mag- 
nificent palaces and broad straight streets. The lower classes are in 
rags; those somewhat higher want the English elegance; while the 
variety of brilliant uniforms, which are never seen in the streets of 
London, still more strongly remind one of the continent. The envi- 
rons of the city have no longer the accustomed freshness; the soil is 
more neglected, the grass and trees scantier. The grand features of 
the landscape, however, the bay, the distant mountains of Wicklow, 
the Hill of Howth, the amphitheatrical mass of houses, the quays, 
the harbour, are beautiful. Such, at least, is the first impression. 

I find myself, in the best inn in the city, less comfortable than in 
the little town of Bangor. The house is large, but seems silent and 
deserted ; while I remember that there, only during my dinner, I 
saw fifteen carriages arrive, all of which were necessarily sent away 
from the door. The influx of strangers is so great along the high- 
roads of England, that waiters in the inns are not hired, but on the 
contrary, sometimes pay as much as 300Z. a year for their places. 
They make a handsome profit, nevertheless, from the fees they re- 
ceive. In Ireland, we return to the continental custom. 

As soon as I had a little refreshed myself I took a walk through the 
city; in the course of which I passed two rather tasteless monuments. 
The one represents William of Orange on horseback, in Roman cos- 
tume. Both man and horse are deformed : the horse has a bit in his 
mouth, and head-gear on, but no appearance of reins, though the king's 



324 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

hand is stretched out exactly as if he were holding them. Does this 
mean that William wanted no rein to ride John Bull ? 

The other monument is a colossal statue of Nelson, standing on a 
high pillar, and dressed in a modern uniform. Behind him hangs a 
cable, which looks more like a pack-thread. The attitude is devoid 
of dignity, and the figure is too high to be distinctly seen. 

I afterwards came to a large round building, towards which the 
people crowded, keeping watch on the outside. On inquiry, I learned 
that the yearly exhibition of fruits and flowers was held here. They 
were just taking away the former as I entered; notwithstanding which, 
I saw many fine specimens. In the midst of the flowers, which 
formed a sort of temple, there was an enclosed space railed round for 
the fruits, which twelve judges ate with great gravity and apparent 
satisfaction. They must have been a long time in coming to a decision; 
for rinds of melons, pears and apples, fragments of pines, stones of 
plums, apricots and peaches, lay in mountains on the table beneath ; 
and although the flowers were all gradually removed by the proprie- 
tors, I did not see that any of the fruits found their way out of this 
temple of Pomona. 

August 12th. 

As I knew not what else to do (for all the ' notables' who inhabit 
the town were in the country,) I visited a number of' show places.' 
First the Castle, where the vice-King resides, and whose miserable 
state-apartments with coarsely boarded floors do not offer anything 
very attractive. — A modern Gothic chapel, the exterior of which is 
a deceptive imitation of antiquity, is more worth seeing : the interior 
is decorated with splendid painted glass from Italy, of the fifteenth 
century, and richly ornamented with modern carvings in wood, of 
truly antique beauty. The whole chapel is heated by pipes of hot 
air ; and a passage, warmed in the same manner and carpeted, con- 
nects it with the Lord Lieutenant's apartments. 

In the extensive and beautiful buildings belonging to the Univer- 
sity a student acted as my cicerone. These young men, when within 
the precincts of the college, are obliged to wear, over their usual 
clothes, a black mantle, and a strange high cap With tassels three- 
quarters of an ell long, which gives them a rather grotesque appear- 
ance. This dress is as rigorously adhered to, as at one time a pig- 
tail and powder were by Saxon staff-officers. 

The young man took me into the Museum ; showed me the burn- 
ing-glass with which Archimedes set fire to the Roman fleet! Ossian's 
harp ;* a stuffed Indian chieftain with tomahawk and spear; and some 
fragments of pillars from the Giant's Causeway, which could not be 
more accurately formed by the hand of man, and which ring like 
English glass. * Je vous fais grace du reste. ' 

In the great hall in which the examinations are held, (the student 
told me this with a slight shudder,) stands a Spanish organ, built for 
the grand Armada. — Much more interesting are the portraits of 
Swift and Burke : both physiognomies express the known qualities 
of the men. The one has an expression as acute and sarcastic as it 
is native and original : the other, full of intellect and power, some- 
what blunt, but yet benevolent and honest, announces the thundering 
orator who contended sincerely and without reserve for his opinion, 
but never glossed over his own interest with affected enthusiasm for 
others. 

* Probably presented by Macpheraon himself. — Editor. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 325 

After visiting the Courts of Justice, the Custom-house, and other 
magnificent buildings, I was going home, when 1 was tempted by the 
advertisement of a ' Peristrephic Panorama' of the battle of Navari- 
no. This is a very amusing sight ; and gives so clear an idea of that 
* untoward event,' that one may console one's self for not having been 
there. You enter a small theatre, — the curtain draws up, and behind 
it is discovered the pictures which represent, in a grand whole, 
the series of the several incidents of the fight. The canvas does 
not hang straight down, but is stretched in a convex semicircle, 
and moved off slowly upon rollers, so that the pictures are changed 
almost imperceptibly, and without any break between scene and scene. 
A man describes aloud the objects represented ; and the distant thun- 
der of cannon, military music, and the noise of the battle, increase 
the illusion. By means of panoramic painting, and a slight undula- 
tion of that part which represents the waves and the ships, the imi- 
tation almost reaches re.nlity. 

The first -scene represents the bay of Navarino with the whole 
Turkish fleet in order of battle. At the opposite extremity of the 
bay is seen Old Navarino and its fortress perched on a high rock ; 
on the side of it the village of Pylos, and in the foreground the city 
of Navarino with Ibrahim's camp, where groups of fine horses, and 
beautiful Greek prisoners surrounded by their captors, attract the 
eye. In the distance, just at the extremity of the horizon, the allied 
fleets are faintly descried. This picture slowly disappears, and is 
succeeded by the open sea, — the entrance to the bay of Navarino 
then gradually- succeeds. You distinguish the armed men on the 
rocks, and at length see the allied fleet forcing the passage. By 
some optical deception everything appears of its natural size ; and 
the spectator seems to be placed in the Turkish position in the bay, 
and to see the admiraPs ship, the Asia, bearing down upon him with 
all sails set. You see Admiral Codrington on the deck in conversa- 
tion with the captain. The other vessels follow in extending lines, 
and with swelling sails, as if ready for the attack ; — a glorious sight! 
Next follow the separate engagements of the several ships, the ex- 
plosion of a fireship, and the sinking of some Turkish frigates. 
Lastly, the engagement between the Asia and the Egyptian admi- 
raPs ship on the one side, and the Turkish on the other, both of 
which, as you know, sank after an obstinate defence of many hours. 

The battle is succeeded by some views of Constantinople, which 
give a very lively idea of Asiatic scenes and habits. 

In the evening I visited the theatre ; a very pretty house, with a 
somewhat less rough and obstreporous audience than those of Lon- 
don. The actors were not bad, though none of them rose above me- 
diocrity. Numerous uniforms were intermingled among the ladies 
in the lower tier of boxes, which seemed to be elegantly filled. The 
higher classes, however, as I am told, seldom visit the theatre here, 
any more than in London. 

August 15th. 

Having seen enough of the city, I have begun my rides in the 
neighbourhood, which is much more beautiful than its appearance at 
my first approach, on the least favourable side, led me to expect. A 
road commanding charming views, — first of the bay, which is inter- 
sected by a mole five miles in length, and bounded at either extre- 
mity by the two light-houses of Dublin and Howth, rising like co- 



326 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

lumns in the distance ; then of the mountains of Wicklow, some 
clothed with wood, some rising like sugar-loaves high above the 
others; and lastly, along an avenue of noble elms by the side of a 
canal, — brought me to the Phoenix. Park, the Prater oi* Dublin, which 
in no respect yields to that of Vienna, whether we regard its expanse 
of beautiful turf for riding, long avenues for driving, or shady walks. 
A large but ill-proportioned obelisk is erected here to the Duke of 
Wellington. I found the park rather empty, but the streets through 
which I returned full of movement and bustle. The dirt, the pover- 
ty, and the ragged clothing of the common people often exceed all 
belief. Nevertheless they seem always good-natured, and sometimes 
have fits of merriment in the open streets which border on madness ; 
— whiskey is generally at the bottom of this. I saw a half-naked lad 
dance the national dance in the market-place so long, and with such 
violent exertion, that at last he fell down senseless amid the cheers 
of the spectators, totally exhausted, like a Mohammedan dervise. 

The streets are crowded with beggar-boys, who buzz around one 
like flies, incessantly offering their services. Notwithstanding their 
extreme poverty, you may trust implicitly to their honesty ; and 
wretched, lean, and famished as they appear, you see no traces of 
melancholy on their open, good-natured countenances. They arc the 
best-bred and most contented beggar-boys in the world. Such a little 
fellow v/ill run by your horse's side for hours, hold it when you alight, 
go on any errand you like ; and is not only contented with the few 
pence you give him, but full of gratitude, which he expresses with 
Irish hyperbole. The Irishman appears generally more patient than 
his neighbours, but somewhat degraded by long slavery. 

I was witness among other things to this : — A young man had 
pasted up a wrong play-bill: the manager of the theatre came up and 
hit him a slap on the face, and otherwise ill-treated him, without his 
making any resistance ; an Englishman would have made instant 
reprisals. 

I passed the evening in the family circle of an old acquaintance, 
a brother of the Lord-lieutenant, who was just come to town for a 
few days. We talked over old times, as we had been much together 
in London. He has a remarkable talent for imitating the late Kem- 
ble, whom he resembles in person. I thought I saw Coriolanus and 
Zanga again. 

August \Uh. 

Another friend, of yet older date, Mr. W ts, to whom I had 

once an opportunity of rendering some service in Vienna, paid me a 
visit this morning, and offered me his country-house as a residence. 

— He had scarcely quitted me, when I was told that Lady B , an 

Irish 'peeress,' and one of the most beautiful women in the country, 
whose acquaintance I had cultivated during the last season in the 
metropolis, was in her carriage below, and wished to speak to me. 
As I was still in the most absolute 'negligee,' I told the waiter, (a 
perfect ' Jocrisse,' whose ' Irish blunders' daily amuse me,) that I 
was not dressed, as he saw, but that I would be ready immediately. 
He announced the state of my toilet ; but added, • de son chef,' that 
"my Lady had better come up." Imagine my astonishment when 

he came back and told me that Lady B had laughed very much, 

and had bid him say that she would willingly wait, but that to pay 
gentlemen morning visits in their chambers was not the custom in 
Ireland. 

■ 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 327 

In this answer appeared the cordial, frank, and good-natured char- 
acter of the true Irish woman, which I had already learned to love 
and admire. A prudish Englishwoman would have driven away in 
high displeasure, and perhaps have ruined the reputation of a young 
man for such a ' qui pro quo' as this : for in English society people 
do not only stumble at things which in other countries produce quite 
a contrary effect; but the 'it is said' in the mouth of an influential 
person is a two-edged sword. ' He has a bad chacacter'* is sufficient 
to shut a hundred doors. against a stranger. An Englishman is much 
less guided by his own observation than is generally imagined : he 
always attaches himself to some party, with whose eyes he sees. 

In the afternoon I went to dine at my friend's villa. The road 
was very agreeable. It began with the Phoenix Park, and followed 
the course of the Liffey, the river which flows through Dublin, where 
its beautiful quays, stone and iron bridges, add so much to the em- 
bellishment of the town. Here it has a rural and romantic charac- 
ter, bordered with the broad leaves of the tussilago, and enclosed by 
soft hills and verdant thickets. I asked a beggar whom! met, how 

far it was to W park, and whether the road continued equally 

beautiful all the way. ' Long life to your honour'!' exclaimed he, 
with Irish patriotism, * only keep right on, and you never saw any- 
thing more beautiful in this world !' 

The entrance to W park is indeed the most delightful in its 

kind that can be imagined. Scenery, by nature most beautiful, is 
improved by art to the highest degree of its capability ; and without 
destroying its free and wild character, a variety and richness of ve- 
getation is produced which enchant the eye. Gay shrubs and wild 
flowers, the softest turf, and giant trees festooned with creeping 
plants, fill the narrow glen through which the path winds by the side 
of the clear dancing brook ; falling in little cataracts, it flows on, 
sometimes hidden in the thicket, sometimes resting like liquid silver 
in an emerald cup, or rushing under overhanging arches of rock, 
which nature seems to have hung there as triumphal arches for the 
beneficent naiad of the valley to pass through. As soon as you leave 
the glen, the enchantment suddenly ceases : the rest in no respect 
answers your high-raised expectations. Scanty grass, stunted trees, 
and thick stagnant water, surround a small Gothic castle, which 
looks like a poor scene in a play. In it, however, you find some 
interesting objects: — among others, some good pictures; and the 
best and most cordial host that one can desire. I must also mention 
a curious ' pavilion rustique' which is built in a suitable spot in the 
'pleasure ground.' It is hexagonal, three sides solid, and fashioned 
of pieces of rough branches of trees very prettily arranged in various 
patterns ; the other three consist of two windows and a door. The 
floor is covered with a mosaic of little pebbles from the brook, the 
ceiling with shells, and the roof is thatched with wheat straw on 
which the full ears are left. 

August \5th. 

Although my chest continues to give me pain, and my doctor 
sometimes makes solemn faces, I go on with my expeditions, which 
afford me great pleasure. 

Character, in England, means (most characteristically, in a counliy where appear- 
ance has more weight than in any other,) not the result or sum of a man's moral and in- 
tellectual qualities, but his reputation, what is said of him. — Editor. 



328 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

I had already fixed a longing eye on one of three hills, four or 
five miles from the city, on the summit of which stand three dis- 
tinct upright masses of rock, from which it takes its name, ' The 
Three Rocks.' The view from it must needs be beautiful. I got 
up, therefore, earlier than usual, that I might reach the top in good 
time. I asked repeatedly in the villages through which I passed, 
which was the best way, but could never get a distinct answer. At 
length I was assured by the inhabitants of a house at the foot of the 
hill, that I could not ride up, and must dismount. This in the pre- 
sent state of my chest was not practicable ; but as I have long learn- 
ed what people's impossibilities are, I took the path they showed 
me, on horseback, without hesitation. I could safely trust my little 
compact mare, for the Irish horses climb over rocks or walls like 
cats. For sometime I followed a tolerably beaten foot-path, and 
when this ceased, the dry bed of a mountain stream, along which I 
rode without much difficulty for about two miles. I now found my- 
self on a large and naked * plateau,' and saw the three rocks, like 
witches' stones, rearing their heads before me. The intervening 
space, however, seemed an impassable bog. I tried it very cau- 
tiously, and found a shingly bottom at about eight or ten inches under 
the boggy soil. This continued all the way ; till after some time I 
reached firm ground, and stood .upon the highest point. The wish- 
ed-for prospect lay before me : Ireland, like a map ; Dublin, like a 
smoking lime-kiln in the green plain, (for the coal-smoke did not al- 
low me to distinguish one single building ;) the bay with its light- 
houses ; the boldly marked headland of Howth ; and on the other 
side, the mountains of Wicklow, stretching away to the horizon, lay 
beneath me bathed in sunlight, and rewarded me for all my fatigue. 

But the scene was yet further animated by a sweet-looking young 
woman, whom I discovered in this wild solitude, busied in the hum- 
ble employment of straw-platting. The natural grace of the Irish 
peasant-women, who are often truly beautiful, is as surprising as 
their dress, or rather their want of dress ; for though it was very 
cold on these" hills, the whole clothing of the young woman before 
me consisted of a large very coarse straw hat, and literally two or 
three rags of the coarsest sackcloth suspended under the breast by 
a piece of cord, and more than half disclosing her handsome person. 
Her conversation was cheerful, sportive and witty ; perfectly unem- 
barrassed, and in a certain sense free ; but you would fall into a 
great error if you inferred from that, any levity or looseness of 
conduct. 

The women of this class in Ireland are, almost universally, ex- 
tremely chaste, and still more disinterested. If one of them ever 
strays from the path of virtue, she is very rarely seduced by those 
considerations of gain, which are so degrading, and, in such mat- 
ters, so unnatural. 

After I had descended the mountain on the other side, leading my 
horse, who scrambled after me as well as he could, I reached the 
high-road, and came upon an open park gate, (for in this also Ire- 
land resembles the continent, where every proprietor, from the king 
to the humble country-gentleman, enhances his own enjoyment by 
sharing it with the public,) and rode in. I soon gave up the enter- 
prise, however, on seeing two gigantic capuchins with gown and 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 329 

cross cut out of painted boards, standing in a cross-way, and each of 
them holding a book on which was written — " To the Pheasantry," 
"To the Abbey." Such bad taste is rare here. 

In the street I met a London ' dandy,' who called out to me, (for 
I did not recognize him,) laughed heartily at our meeting 'in such 
a horrid place,' ran on for some time in a satirical vein on Dublin 
society, and at last coucluded by informing me, that through the in- 
fluence of his family, he had just obtained a place here, which, in- 
deed, brought him in 2000/. a year, and gave him nothing to do, but 
which compelled him ' pro forma' to pass a part of every year in 
this 'shocking' abode. With such, and even much richer sinecures, 
are the younger sons of the English aristocracy provided in count- 
less numbers, and in all parts of the empire. I think, however, that 
even here, the pitcher will not always go to the well without break- 
ing 3 though I must confess that these defects in the English gov- 
ernment, compared with the arbitrary power exercised in other 
states, are but spots on the sun. 

I of course entirely except Ireland, which appears to experience, 
in almost every instance, a step-mother's care; whicfi contributes 
largely to the power and splendour of the English nobility, without 
receiving back the smallest portion of those advantages of which 
England receives so much. 

August 18//*. 
Your letters are still so melancholy, dear Julia * * 

You see, then, that it is not events themselves, so much as your own 
^iew of them, which years have tinged with a more gloomy colour; 
But alas ! this is the most irremediable of all evils! We are not 
what we were ; and the one eternal and universal error remains— 
that we think we can help ourselves by an exertion of strength, when 
the strength is no longer there: — as soon can we be or look young 
again! I too begin to feel traces of this — but only there, where the 
world lays its fetters around me ; when alone with God and nature, 
the gloomiest horizon has no power to darken my inner sun. | 

I accompanied Lady B — — , of whom I have already spoken, to 
breakfast to-day at the country-house of a much admired young lady. 
The master of the house excused himself on the plea of headache, 
and I was therefore left to take a long walk in the grounds with the two 
ladies alone. On our arrival at the gate which was to lead us to one of 
the mostbeautiful parts of the wood, it waslocked — no key tobefound; 
and according to the report of the old gardener, the lady's maid had 
gone in, and taken it away with her. A servant was ordered to jump 
over the wall, and to seek the offender: he came back, however, with- 
out any tidings of her. I now got a ladder, and helped my laughing 
companions to climb over the wall ; they professed great awkward- 
ness, but acquitted themselves most gracefully. After walking a 
quarter of an hour we met the unfortunate lady's maid, and — as she 
thought herself safe — not alone : it may be imagined in what com- 
pany. A mute domestic scene followed : and as I am too good na- 
tured to laugh, it really grieved me that my ladder had been the 
cause of such distress. I declined staying to dinner, and hastened 
back to town to call on Lady M , to whom I had a letter of intro- 
duction, and who had already sent me a polite invitation which I had 
not been able to accept. I was very eager to make the acquaintance 

42 



330 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

of a woman whom I rate so highly as an authoress. I found her, 
however, very different from what I had pictured her to myself. 
She is a little, frivolous, lively woman, apparently between thirty and 
forty, neither pretty nor ugly, but by no means disposed to resign 
all claim to the former, and with really fine and expressive eyes. 
She has no idea of 'mauvaise honte' or embarrassment; her manners 
are not the most refined, and affect the ' aisance' and levity of the 
fashionable world, which, however, do not sit calmly or naturally 
upon her. She has the English weakness, — that of talking inces- 
santly of fashionable acquaintances, and trying to pass for very * re- 
cherche' to a degree quite unworthy of a woman of such distinguished 
talents; and she is not at all aware how she thus underrates herself. 
She is not difficult to know, for with more vivacity than good 
taste, she instantly professes perfect openness, and especially sets 
forth on every occasion her liberalism and her infidelity ; the latter 
of the somewhat obsolete school of Helvetius and Condillac. In her 
writings she is far more guarded and dignified than in her conversa- 
tion. The satire of the latter is, however, not less biting and dex- 
terous than that of her pen, and just as little remarkable for a con- 
scientious regard to truth. You may think that with all these 
elements two hours flew rapidly away. I had enthusiasm enough to 
be able to utter some ' a propos' which pleased her, and she treated 
me with marked attention: first, because I happened to have a distin- 
guished title ; and secondly, because she had seen my name as dancing 
at Almacks, and as present at several 'fetes' of the great leaders of 
Ton — a circumstance which appeared so important in her eyes, that 
she repeatedly recurred to it. 

August 20th. 

Yesterday evening I was engaged to a 'soiree' at Lord C 's, 

the head of a new family, but one of the oldest ' wits' of Dublin. I 

was invited to accompany his friend lady M , but was prevented 

by a tragi-comical incident. I had ridden out to visit MrL at his 

country-seat (a trouble which between ourselves neither he nor his 
family deserved), and it was late when I set out on my return. To 
save time, I took my way across the country, ' a la Seidlitz.' For 
some miles all went on capitally, till just at twilight I came to a very 
wide ditch, the opposite bank of which was considerably lower than 
the one on which I stood, and surrounded a broad meadow. I leaped 
into this enclosure ; but on trying to get out on the other side, my 
horse refused, and all my efforts to bring him to obedience were vain. 
I alighted to lead him, mounted again to try to leap him at another 
place, — tried fair means and foul ; all equally in vain: till at length 
he made an awkward attempt at a leap, fell with me into the muddy 
water, and with some difficulty scrambled back again to the inner 
and lower bank. All hope of getting out of the enchanted spot in 
which I was caught as in a mouse-trap, was now lost: — it was be- 
come quite dark, I was wet through, and extremely heated ; and was 
at last obliged to come to the determination of leaving my horse, 
getting over the fatal ditch, ' tant bien que mal,' on foot, and seek- 
ing help and shelter where I could. The moon came kindly from 
behind the clouds, and aided me with her welcome light. After a 
most toilsome walk of half an hour over ploughed land and through 
high wet grass, I reached a miserable hut, in which every body was 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 331 

already asleep. I walked in, (for ihe houses here are never fastened ;) 
a couple of pigs grunted under my feet, and near them lay the master 
of the house. With some difficulty I made him understand my re- 
quest, which I enforced by jingling some silver close to his ear. This 
universal language awakened him more effectually than my invoca- 
tions; he sprang up, called a comrade, and went out to my ' Didone ab- 
bandonata. ' Irishmen are never at a loss for expedients ; they found 
a broken and deserted wooden bridge near at hand, laid it across the 
ditch, and I at length found myself on the high road with my libe- 
rated steed. I reached home so late, and in such a plight, that I de- 
sired nothing but rest, and was sorry to hear that lady M had 

been to fetch me, and had driven away in great vexation an hour ago. 

The next morning I went to make my excuses. She pardoned me 
graciously, but assured me that I had lost a great deal, for that all 
the rank and fashion of the town were there. I assured her with 
great sincerity that I regretted nothing but the loss of her society, 
but that I hoped to be indemnified for that as soon as I had made my 
' sentimental journey' to the county of Wicklow, for which my Ger- 
man romantic soul ardently thirsted, and which I intended to com- 
mence the following morning on horseback. The conversation be- 
came very gay, — for she likes that ; and at last ended so petulantly, 
that she exclaimed, l Finissez !' when you come back I shall receive 
you just like an elder sister : to which I answered, laughing, ' That I 
cannot agree to ; — je craindrais lc sort d'Abufar.' Addressed to 
Lady M — — this was certainly rather a ' fade' joke. 

The continuation of my adventures you will receive from themidst 
of rocks and mountains. Adieu ! may heaven send you serenity and 
peace, and may every word of my letters whisper to you ' true love 
till death.' Your L . 



LETTER XXIX. 

August 22nd, 1 828. 
Beloved Julia, 

About noon I quitted Dublin entirely alone, comfortably establish- 
ed on my good steed. I left my carriage and people in the town, and 
sent a little travelling bag, containing my most necessary effects, be- 
fore me by the stage-coach. Unfortunately, however, this was 
changed by mistake; and though I waited for it a whole day and 
night in Bray, only twenty miles from Dublin, it did not overtake 
me ; rather than go back or wait longer, I bought a Scotch cloak and 
some linen in Bray, and entered on my tour quite after the fashion 
of a student. I supped with a young parson of good family, who 
made me laugh heartily at his orthodoxy in matters of religion, in- 
terspersed with talk which was by no means remarkable for severe 
decorum or virtue. But such is the piety of Englishmen, — it is to 
them at once a party matter and an affair of good manners ; and as 
in politics they follow their party implicitly, through thick and thin, 
reasonable and unreasonable, because it is their party ; — as they sub- 
mit to a custom for ever because it is a custom ; so they regard their 
religion, (without the least tincture of poetry,) in exactly the same 
point of view: they go to church on Sundays, just as regularly as 



332 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

they dress every day for dinner; and regard a man who neglects 
cht»rch, just in the same light as one who eats fish with a knife.* 

Accompanied by the young divine, who was travelling the same 
way for some distance, I left Bray at five o'clock in the morning. 
In a most lovely country we passed Kilruddery, a newly built seat 
of the Earl of Meath, in the style of the houses of Elizabeth's time ; 
— in this case the masses are not sufficiently large to produce a good 
effect. The park is not very extensive, but long and narrow ; the 
gardens, in the old French taste, are very celebrated ; but, probably 
owing to our unpretending appearance, we v/ere most discourteously 
denied admittance. In England this is common enough, but rare in 
Ireland, and gave no very favourable impression of the philanthropy 
of the possessor. My companion, who is an adherent of ' la grace 
efficace,' — that is to say, who is firmly persuaded that God, from all 
eternity, predestined his favourites for heaven, and others who 
pleased him less for hell, — made no doubt, in his wrath, that the 
Lord of Kilruddery belonged to the latter category. " It is a dis- 
grace to an Irishman !" exclaimed he, angrily ; and I had some dif- 
ficulty in making him understand the duty of tolerance. 

A second park, Bellevue, the property of a worthy old gentleman, 
readily opened its gates to us. Here is a summer-house which seems 
to hang in the air, and overlooks the • Glen of the Downs,' a deep 
valley, behind which two extinct volcanoes rear their conical heads. 
The summer-house had just been prettily covered with purple heather. 
A less happy thought was a stuffed tiger, lying as if alive in the ante 
room. 

My travelling chaplain here quitted me, and I rode alone to the 
vale of Durwan, where, in a narrow romantic pass, stands a rock 
eighty or a hundred feet high, shaped in the rude outline of the 
human figure. The country people, who relate many wondrous sto- 
ries about it, call it the Giant. Not far from it are the ruins of a 
castle, so entirely overgrown with ivy, that you must approach very 
near to distinguish it from the surrounding trees. At the end of the 
valley the path winds over meadows to a considerable height, which 
command a most exquisite view. I looked across the sea, and saw, 
almost with a feeling of home sickness, the Welsh mountains in the 
blue distance. 

After having refreshed myself with bread and milk in a little coun- 
try inn, I took my way to the ' Devil's Glen,' which merits the 
name it bears. The wild scene opens with a Gothic castle, whose 
blackened walls rise above the surrounding wood : you then plunge 
into a glen whose sides gradually rise higher and higher, and are 
more and more contracted, while the moaning breeze rustles louder 
through the dark thicket, and the torrent roars more fearfully. I 
rode on with difficulty over the slippery earth, incessantly annoyed 
by the overhanging boughs, and suddenly found the path terminated 
by a magnificent cascade, which plunges headlong over lofty crags, 
and disappears foaming in the bottom. If not the devil himself, it 
is at least Kuhleborn. 

Most agreeable is the change from this awful glen to the lovely syl- 
van valley of Rosanna, where I ate my mid-day repast under the shade 

* The common people in England put the knife as well as the fork to their mouths. 
The higher classes, on the contrary, regard this as the true sin against the Holy Ghost, 
and cross themselves internally when they see a foreign Ambassador now and then eat 
so ; — it is an affront to the whole nation. 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 333 

of high ash-trees. I found two regular English tourists, armed with 
hortits siccus and hammers. They had resided here for some weeks, 
during which time they had had the clean table-cloth removed from 
the dirty table, and remained sitting an hour at dessert, with exactly 
the same punctuality as in a London coffee-house, though they had 
miserable sloe-juice instead of claret, and roasted apples instead of 
ripe fruit. 

At seven o'clock I mounted my horse again, galloped ten miles 
along the main road, and just before sunset reached the exquisitely" 
beautiful Avondale. In this paradise every possible charm is united. 
A wood which appears of measureless extent, two noble rivers, 
rocks of every variety of picturesque form, the greenest meadows, 
the most varied and luxuriant shrubberies and thickets ; in short, 
scenery changing at every step, yet never diminishing in beauty. 
The last time I traversed the valley it was moonlight, and I should 
have found my way with difficulty but for a young man who was re- 
turning from shooting ; with true Irish kindness and courtesy he ac- 
companied me at least three miles on foot, far beyond the most intri- 
cate parts. The night was extremely clear and mild, the sky as blue 
as by day, and the moon lustrous as a gem. Though I lost some- 
thing in extent of view, I gained perhaps more by the magic light 
which was diffused through the atmosphere ; by the darker and more 
fantastic * contours' of the rocks, — the thought-pregnant stillness, — 
and the sweetly-awful loneliness of night. 

At ten o'clock I reached the end of my day's journey, Avoca Inn; 
where I found very tolerable accommodation, kind and hearty attend- 
ance, and moderate charges. I met another English tourist in the 
eating-room : — but this was a high spirited and interesting young 
man, who fully sympathized in my rapture at the enchanting country, 
and with whom I talked away a very pleasant hour at tea, before I 
sat down to write to you. But now good night, for mountain travel- 
ling demands early rising. 

Boundwood, August 23rd. 

Yesterday I rode eight German miles, — to-day nine ; and my chest 
is not at all the worse. Pleasure is an excellent restorative ; and I 
have seen so many varied objects, that these few days appear to me 
like so many weeks. 

I had slept well, though the broken windows of my chamber were 
only repaired with pillows. My humble lodging was succeeded by 
a better breakfast, and my horse was excellently taken care of. I 
ride like the Arabs, either at a gallop or a foot pace : this fatigues 
one the least, and gets over the most ground. My first excursion 
was to the celebrated ' Meeting of the Waters,' where the two rivers 
Avon-beg and Avon-more unite their streams. They have chosen the 
most picturesque spot in which to celebrate their nuptial feast. 

On a rock on this side stands Castle Howard, with its numerous 
towers and battlements, which, unluckily, were but just finished, and 
on a near approach lost all their imposing effect. I found the castle 
still buried in sleep ; and a servant in his shirt showed me the pic- 
tures, among which is a splendid portrait of Mary Stuart. 1 his 
must be a speaking likeness; it is clearly of her time; and the at- 
tractive, truly French face, with the delicate nose, the captivating 
mouth, the languishing fire of the eyes; and that indescribable, inimi- 
table expression which, without making any direct advance, yet some- 



334 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

how inspires courage, and though not devoid of womanly dignity, 
yet at the first glance bespeaks confidence and intimacy, — all con- 
vince one that thus the woman must have looked, whom scarcely 
any man could approach nearly, however severed by inequality of 
rank, without soon assuming the character of a lover. Her hands 
are exquisite; and in her dress, although of the 'barroque' style of 
that age, there reigns such harmony, that one is instantly convinced 
she was not less skilled in the arts of the toilet than her country- 
women of the present day. 

An excellent road leads from this place through the ' entire vale' 
to the park of Bally-Arthur. The peculiar characteristic of this val- 
ley is, that the hills on either side are clothed with such impenetra- 
ble beech-woods that there is no visible interval between the masses, 
and it really looks as if you could ride on the tops of the trees. I 
here quitted the road, and followed a footpath in the thicket, which 
led me to a very beautiful view; at the termination of the long glen, 
the towers of Arklow appeared as if set in a frame. About a mile 
and a half further on, the path suddenly ends in a ha-ha, over which 
my horse utterly refused to leap. As the wall was on my side, and 
the turf below very soft, I hit upon a new expedient: I tied my 
handkerchief over the eyes of the refractory beast, and pushed him 
down backwards over the wall. He was very little frightened, and not 
at all hurt by the fall as I had expected, and grazed peaceably blind- 
fold till I rejoined him. This manoeuvre saved meat least five miles. 

The new park in which I now found myself, — for all this part of 
the country is a continued pleasure-ground, — belonged to Shelton 
Abbey, a modern piece of Gothicry, intended to represent an old 
abbey. The possessors had been absent for years; and a negro who 
was at work in the garden, showed me the rooms, in which are some 
very interesting pictures. The hero of one is the great-grandfather 
of the possessor ; the scene in Italy, and the costume, as well as the 
manners represented, most strange and even revolting. The civil 
negro led me across the fields and through a pretty deep ford in the 
river, (whose ice-cold waters did not seem to alarm him), to the 
town of Arklow, whence I returned along the high road to dinner 
at Avoca Inn. In the course of my ride I ascended another hill, 
from which I looked down into three distinct valleys, the contrasted 
character of which afforded a most singular view. Scarcely had I 
seated myself at table (at Avoca), when I was told that some one 
wished to speak to me. A young man, whom I had never seen, was 
shown in, and presented to me a pocket-book, which, to my no 
small astonishment, I recognized as my own ; containing, besides 
other important papers which I always carry about me, all the mo- 
ney I had taken for my journey. I had, Lord knows how, dropped 
it out of my breast-pocket in the summer-house; and had, there- 
fore, no small reason to congratulate myself on so honourable and 
obliging a finder. In England I should hardly have had the good 
fortune to see my pocket-book again, even if a * gentleman' had found 
it; he would probably have let it lie in peace, — or kept it. 

I must here take occasion to explain to you what this far-famed 
epithet ' gentleman' means, since the signification affixed to it is in- 
imitably characteristic of the English. 

1 A gentleman' is neither a man of noble birth, nor a man of noble 
sentiments {weder ein Edelmami noch ein edler Man — neither a 



IRELAND AND FRANCE. 335 

Nobleman nor a noble man ;) but, in strictness,* a man of independ- 
ent means, and perfect knowledge of the usages of good society. 
He who serves or works for the public in any way, (the higher 
functionaries of the state, and here and there a poet or artist of the 
first category only excepted,) is no 'gentleman,' or at best only a 
half a one. I was greatly astonished at hearing a certain well-known 
personage, with whom all lovers of horses, native and foreign, are 
well acquainted; who is rich, who is on a footing of intimacy with 
many Dukes and Lords, and enjoys great consideration, but who 
presides at a weekly auction of horses (thereby doing useful service to 

the public) — say of himself, " I can't imagine how the Duke of B 

could commission me to carry a challenge to Count M ; he ought 

to have employed a gentleman, — those things are not in my way." 

A really poor man, who is not in a situation to contract debts, can 
on no terms be a 'gentleman.' On the contrary, a rich scamp, who 
has had what is called a good education, so "long as he preserves his 
'character'f (reputation) dexterously, passes for a 'perfect gentle- 
man.' In the exclusive society of London there are yet finer 'nu- 
ances.' A man, for instance, who were to manifest any timidity or 
courtesy towards women, instead of treating them in a familiar, con- 
fident, and 'nonchalant' manner, would awaken the suspicion that he 
was 'no gentleman:' but should the luckless man ask twice for soup 
at dinner, or appear in evening dress at a breakfast which begins at 
three in the afternoon and ends at midnight,— he may be a prince 
and a 'millionaire,' but he is no gentleman.' 

But let us back from Babylon's tyrannous jargon to the freedom of 
the hills. The country through which I now rode was strikingly like 
the flat part of Switzerland, gradually rising till I found myself oppo- 
site to the highest mountains of Wicklow, whose heads were shrouded 
in clouds. The valley of Glenmalure has a character of desolate sub- 
limity, which harmonized perfectly with the weather. In the midst 
stands a deserted and already decaying barrack, which looks like a 
haunted castle; — neither tree nor bush is to be seen, and the sides 
of the mountains are covered with loose stones. The valley has only 
subterranean inhabitants, and their life produces death. Here are 
great lead-works, whose unwholesome exhalations are traced on the 
pallid faces of the workmen. I dressed myself in a black slop, and 
was driven into one of the entrances, — a gloomy and terrific journey. 
The passages were cold as ice; pitch-darkness reigned in them, and 
a cutting wind loaded with a death-like smell blew in our faces. 
Minute drops fell with a hollow sound from the low roof, which 
bent us nearly double ; and the jolting of the car, which a man drag- 
ged slowly over the rugged bottom, completed the picture of horrors. 

The delicate state of my chest did not permit me to remain long 
here, and I gave up all further researches, glad 'once more to see 
the rosy light.' 

I had now to ride over a new and magnificent military road (for 
the government has the watchfulness of a bad conscience about Ire- 
land,) over one of the mountains which enclose the valley. The 
view from the heights was extensive and beautiful, and yet of a very 
different character from any I had yet seen: it was much improved 

* In a more loose and general sense, every man of respectable appearance is called a 
gentleman. 

t This has nothing to do with morality, only with ' scandale." 1 



336 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

by a most favourable light thrown by the sun from beneath a line of 
black clouds. No effect of light gives such clearness and brilliancy 
to distant objects as this. The rays lay in broad stripes like a glory 
on the intersecting lines of hills; and the two 'Sugar Loaves' stood 
overtopping all, in deep blue against this clear horizon. The way 
down the mountain is so serpentine that I could gallop along it with 
ease. It was nevertheless quite evening before I reached the last 
valley which I had yet to see in this day's tour — the Valley of the 
Seven Churches. Here stood, above a thousand years ago, 'sic 
fabula docet,' a large city with seven churches, which the Danes 
destroyed. A handsome gateway still remains almost entire, though 
the key-stone is wanting. Time has repaired this loss by a thick 
ivy branch, which holds together the whole arch. Seven distinct 
ruins are, according to the popular belief, the remains of those holy 
structures which gave its name to the valley. Only one of them 
indisputably bears this character, and is remarkable from one of the 
highest of those strange mysterious towers, without doors or win- 
dows, which are found near many ruins of religious houses in Ire- 
land. At the further end of the valley, sunk in the deepest hollow 
and most sacred repose, sleep two dark lakes, celebrated for the 
adventures of Saint Kevin. The rocks around them are uncom- 
monly steep, and in many places formed like stairs. In one is a nar- 
row and deep cleft, exactly as if cut by a mighty blow. The legend 
tells that the young giant Fian MacCumhal, being thought by his 
comrades yet too weak to serve in the war they were then waging, 
cleft the rock with his sword, and so put an end to their doubts. 
Further still, in a rock overhanging the lake, you descry a black 
hole in the cave, — Saint Kevin's cell. 

Here the saint sought refuge from the persecuting love of the 
king's beautiful daughter Cathelin, and lived for a long time in soli- 
tude on roots and herbs. In a fatal hour the wandering fair-one 
discovered the fugitive, and surprised him in the dead of night on 
his mossy couch. With sweet kisses she awakened the ungallant 
saint; who seeing his danger, took the desperate resolution of push- 
ing Cathelin over the precipice into the lake, where she lost life and 
love in its dark waters. 

But the man of God felt some touch of human pity, and com- 
manded that no other life should ever be lost in these waters, — a 
charm which, as my guide testified, is in full force to this day. This 
' cicerone' was a pretty, and as usual half-naked, boy of about eleven; 
his dress was a specimen of an Irish toilette, worthy of mention. 
He wore the coat of a grown man, which besides many diaphanous 
places, was deficient in a sleeve and a half, and one flap, while the 
other streamed after him like the tail of a comet. Neckcloth, waist- 
coat, and shirt were dismissed, as wholly superfluous: to make 
amends, the remains of a pair of red plush breeches made a most 
magnificent appearance, though in somewhat strong contrast with 
the naked legs beneath. To see this figure scramble over the rocks 
like a squirrel, singing all the while bits of " Tommy"* Moore and 
Walter Scott, was certainly characteristic. As he led me to the 
cave, at a point where the passage was rather slippery, he cried, 
"Oh you can come on very well; I brought Sir Walter Scott here, 
and he climbed over the worst places, though he had a lame foot." 
He could talk of nothing else; and recited rapidly four lines which 

* So the Irish delight to call him, proud of his ' landsmannschafC (country manship). 






IRELAND, AKD FBANCE. 337 

Scott or Moore, I forget which, had composed iti the cavern. 
These people are so exactly suited to the wild and ruin-clad country, 
that without them it would lose much of its romantic interest. 

In order to reach a tolerable inn at night, I had to ride ten miles 
over an interminable moor, the usual haunt of all sorts of spirits, 
though only now and then a solitary Will-o'-the-wisp flitted by me. 

When I reached the village, both the inns were fdled with 'tour- 
ists;' and it was with the greatest difficulty that I procured a little 
sort of ante-room, in which I was to sleep on straw. The tea, but- 
ter, toast and eggs were, however, excellent, and hunger seasoned 
my repast. I cannot describe to you how delightful this life is to 
me. Amidst all its privations, I feel myself a hundred times more 
k a mon aise,' than encumbered and annoyed with a thousand unne- 
cessary conveniences. I am as free as the bird in the air, and that 
is one of the highest enjoyments. 

And now, honour to whom honour is due. Few men would sit 
down with religious regularity every evening, after such fatigues, to 
write you a faithful report of all the events of the day. If it does 
but give you pleasure, I am rewarded a thousandfold. 

Bray, August 24lh. 

Gall maintained, as you may remember, when he examined my 
skull in Paris, that I have a very prominent organ of veneration. 
Nevertheless many have regarded me as a vile heretic ; but he was 
right ; — that is, if religion consists in love, and in a sincere striving 
after truth. In such a joyful, pious frame of mind did I greet the 
fresh morning with prayer and praise, and the inward brightness 
broke through the gloomy damp mist which surrounded me ; for the 
weather was extremely bad. The road too was desert and melan- 
choly; — but, patience! the evening brought back sunshine and 
beauty. 

For the present I saw nothing around me, as far as my eye could 
reach, but barren heath and moor; a stormy wind blew across it in 
gusts ; and drove before it the rack, which, when I came within its 
reach, wetted me like a heavy rain. Short and feeble gleams of sun 
gave momentary hope, till about noon the clouds parted ; and exactly 
as I reached the summit of the mountain above the magnificent valley 
and lake of Luggelaw, the sun gilded all the country beneath me, 
though the tops of the hills were yet shrouded in mist. 

This valley belongs to a wealthy proprietor, who has converted it 
into a delightful park. It is singularly laid out, and I will try to give 
you an idea of it. The valley forms a nearly regular long oval basin. 
The lake occupies the immediate fore-ground to the mountain's foot ; 
the middle-ground is meadow-land, studded with groups of trees, and 
watered by a meandering stream ; and in its centre, backed by a sol- 
itary rock, is an elegant ' shooting lodge.' The mountains surround- 
ing the valley are very high and steep, and rise on every side, in a 
bare and unbroken line from the perfectly level plain. On the left 
are naked rocks of imposing aspect, only here and there overgrown 
with heath-plants ; the three other sides are clothed with thick and 
varied vegetation, whose foliage hangs into the very lake. At the 
spot where the mountain streams flow through bright green herbage 
into the lake, it forms a broad waterfall. It is indeed a lovely spot of 
earth, lonely and secluded ; the wood full of game, the lake full of 
fish, and nature full of poetry. As the shooting season has not yet 

43 



338 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

begun, the proprietor was absent ; and the wife of the steward, a still 
pretty woman, though rather ' pa's'sce,' with handsome white hands, 
and manners above her station, at my request prepared my breakfast ; 
while her lively little son conducted me about the valley. A beauti- 
ful greyhound, who bounded over the ground as lightly as a leaf borne 
by the wind, and enjoyed his freedom in the wildest gambols, accom- 
panied us. We climbed, not without pain to my chest, l car je ne 
vaux plus rien a pied,' to a rocky table-land, four hundred feet high, 
which overlooks the whole valley. Opposite is a strange sport of 
nature, — a monstrous face regularly formed in stone, looking gloom- 
ily and angrily on the lake below. The eye-brows and beard were 
distinctly marked by moss heath, and the prominent cheeks and deep 
sunk eyes perfectly formed by the clefts in the rock. The mouth is 
open ; — when you remove further off it closes, but without altering 
the other features. It is really a high prerogative to possess such a 
living image of a mountain spirit. He looks, however, as I said, 
angrily on the lake, and seems to call aloud with open mouth, " Ye 
human creatures, leave my valley, my fish, my game, my rocks, and 
woods in peace ! Leave them, or I will bury you, ye pigmies, under 
my ruins ! But it is in vain ! the voice of spirits is become power- 
less since man's own spirit awoke. Rubezahl's countenance is turned 
to stone, and his voice dies away in the gusty breeze, which irrever- 
ently sports with his bushy eyebrows, and curls the waves of the lake 
as if in scorn against him. 

An interval of ten miles of uninteresting country lay between this 

walk and my arrival at the gate of the park of P , one of the 

most extensive and beautiful in Ireland. But it was Sunday, the lord 
of the domain a saint, — and of course the gate locked. On this day, 
according to his view of the matter, a pious man must on no account 
leave his house except to enclose himself within the gloomy walls of a 
damp church : on no account rejoice himself in God's own wondrou3 

and magnificent temple. This was a sin to which Lord P would 

by no means afford encouragement, and at his recent departure had 
therefore prohibited the opening of his gate. Instructed by the ad- 
venture which you may recollect befell me in England, I made no at- 
tempt at winning a passage by means of a gift, but pursued my way 
along a wall, over which from time to time I cast a longing and 
stolen glance at the magnificent waterfall and the enchanting scene. 
Thou beneficent God ! thought I, in what different ways art thou 
worshipped ! One man roasts his neighbour to thy honour ; another 
fashions thee as Apis : some represent thee more partial and unjust 
than the devil himself; others think they offer thee the most accept 
able service when they deface thy loveliest gifts, or deprive them- 
selves and others of the enjoyment of them. Oh ! Lord P , you 

will not read these lines ; but it were good for you if you could, and 
if you would lay them to heart ! Full many a poor man, who sweats 
through the whole week that he may pay you your rent, would feel 
his heart expand with joy on a Sunday in your beautiful park, and 
would bless the goodness of that God who has not left him wholly 
destitute; who has spread out before his eyes the glory and the beauty 
of creation. And this joy would be reflected back upon yourself; — 
but perhaps, you are not even present ? Perhaps you send your pious 
commands from afar ? You are, perhaps, like so many of your col- 
leagues, one of those ' absentees' who by the hands of ravenous and 
merciless agents strip the people of their last rag, rob them of their 



iitELAND, AND FRANCE. 339 

last potatoe,* to enrich the charlatans of London, Paris, or Italy. 
Then, indeed, if that be the case, your religion can hardly go be- 
yond superstitious veneration for the Sunday, and for the ceremo- 
nies of your priests. 

From hence to Bray the cultivation is luxuriant ; the country is 
filled with houses and gardens of the opulent citizens : the road lies 
at the foot of the Great Sugar Loaf, whose hoary naked cone is 
barren of all vegetation. I saw some travellers who had just ascend- 
ed it, and looked like moving chess-men ; I envied them the mag- 
nificent view, for the day was brilliant, and the atmosphere perfectly 
clear. Towards evening I lay myself down in a lonely spot, among 
the field-flowers by the side of a brook, and gave myself up to a 
dreamy and grateful delight in this beautiful world ; leaving, like a 
knight-errant, my faithful steed to graze by my side. I thought of 
you and of past times ; I called on the living to appear, and the dead 
to arise, and looked into my past life as into a mirror — now with a 
melancholy, then with a cheerful smile : for through all the follies 
and vanities of this world, through errors and faults, there still ran 
one pure silver thread strong enough to endure; — feelings of child- 
like love, and a high capacity for enjoyments which God's goodness 
renders attainable by all. 

I returned to Bray in good time, and found my travelling-bag ar- 
rived ; it contained many things which, after long privation, were 
not to be despised : among others, it afforded me the most interesting 
of companions, Lord Byron. I have now two portraits of him be- 
fore me, drawings which have been given me, and which I have 
had bound in the Giaour and Don Juan. Like Napoleon, while yet 
aspiring, he is thin, wild and melancholy ; when he had reached the 
summit, he is fat and smiling. But in both these otherwise so dif- 
ferent countenances is seen that scornful, haughty spirit, deeply sha- 
ken by fate, more deeply sensitive by nature, which animated these 
features. 

I can never refrain from laughing at the English, who pass such 
pitiful cockney judgments on this their second poet (for after Shaks- 
peare the palm is surely his,) because he ridiculed their pedantry, 
because he could not adapt himself to the manners and usages of 
their little nook, nor share in their cold superstition ; because their 
insipidity was sickening to him, and because he denounced their ar- 
rogance and hypocrisy. Many of them cross themselves (inwardly) 
when they mention him ; and even the women, though their cheeks 
glow with enthusiasm when they read him, in public take part vehe- 
mently against their secret favourite. 

It was worthy of grateful Germany, worthy of our Patriarch, to 
erect a lasting German arch of triumph, to a man who belongs to 
Europe, opposite to that monument of infamy which the English have 
laboured to build. 

Could I but bid you a ' farewell' as immortal as his, — it should 
be no last, I hope no long farewell, but as tender and as touching. 
Think of me thus. 

Your faithful L 

* Tins is no exaggeration. I have heard snch things here, proved by legal evidence, 
and seen such misery as never were witnessed in the limes of villanage in Germany, and 
are hardly to be paralleled in countries where slavery now prevails. — Editor. 



340 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



LETTER XXX. 

Dublin, Aug. 29th, 1828 
Dear and kind one, 

I have passed the last few days in bed with fever and pain. I am 
but now sufficiently recovered to answer your letter. What you send 
me from B — is indeed very flattering to me, though the enthusiasm 
which my little labours excite in him is the growth of his own poetical 
soul alone, which paints what ought to be, and believes that it is. 
Do not wish for my return before it is possible ; and trust me, that 
where a man is not he is commonly desired ; as soon as he is there, 
he is thought, by many, in the way. 

I rode out again to-day for the first time to see the fair at Donny- 
brook, near Dublin, which is a kind of popular festival. Nothing 
indeed can be more national ! The poverty, the dirt, and the wild 
tumult were as great as the glee and merriment with which the cheap- 
est pleasures were enjoyed. I saw things eaten and drunk with de- 
light, which forced me to turn my head quickly away to remain 
master of my disgust. Heat and dust, crowd and stench, ( k il faut 
le dire,') made it impossible to stay long ; but these do not annoy 
the natives. There were many hundred tents, all ragged like the 
people, and adorned with tawdry rags instead of flags; many con- 
tented themselves with a cross on a hoop ; one had hoisted a dead 
and half putrid cat as a sign ! The lowest sort of rope-dancers and 
posture-masters exercised their toilsome vocation on stages of planks, 
and dressed in shabby finery, dancing and grimacing in the dreadful 
heat till they were completely exhausted. A third part of the pub- 
lic lay, or rather rolled about, drunk ; others ate, screamed, shouted 
and fought. The women rode about, sitting two and three upon an 
ass, pushed their way through the crowd, smoked with great delight, 
and coquetted with their sweethearts. The most ridiculous group 
was one which I should have thought indigenous only to Rio de la 
Plata : two beggars were seated on a horse, who by his wretched 
plight seemed to supplicate for them ; they had no saddle, and a piece 
of twine served as reins. 

As I left the fair, a pair of lovers, excessively drunk, took the 
same road. It was a rich treat to watch their behaviour. Both were 
horribly ugly, but treated each other with the greatest tenderness, 
and the most delicate attention. The lover especially displayed a 
sort of chivalrous politeness. Nothing could be more gallant, and 
at the same time more respectful, than his repeated efforts to preserve 
his fair one from falling, although he had no little difficulty in keep- 
ing his own balance. From his ingratiating demeanour and her 
delighted smiles, I could also perceive that he was using every en- 
deavour to entertain her agreeably ; and that her answers, notwith- 
standing her ' exalte' state, were given with a coquetry and an air of 
affectionate intimacy which would have been exquisitely becoming 
and attractive in a pretty woman. 

My reverence for truth compels me to acid that not the slightest 
trace of English brutality was to be perceived : they were more like 
French people, though their gaiety was mingled with more humour, 
and more genuine good-nature; both of which are national traits of 
thelrish, and are always doubled by Potheen (the best sort of whisky 
illicitly distilled.) 



IRELAND, AM) FRANCE, 341 

Don't reproach me for the vulgarity of the pictures I send you: 
they are more akin to nature than the painted dolls of our 'salons.' 

Bray, August SOtk. 

I am returned hither on purpose to see the park of Powei scotirt, 
from which Sunday lately debarred me. It would not be easy for 
Nature to unite greater capabilities than she has lavished here with 
bounteous hand; and her gifts have been skilfully turned to account. 

You enter by the Dargle, a very deep and narrow glen, thickly 
wooded with high trees. In the bottom gushes a full and rapid 
stream. The road ascends on the right side, and the eye travels 
down the green depths, out of which it catches here and there a gleam 
of the water, or a bold group of rocks. Three large mountains rise 
above the glen, and, though at some distance, seem quite close, as 
their base is hidden: they were tinged this evening with a deep rosy 
red, by a sun worthy of Italy, and contrasted beautifully with the 
bright green of the oaks. 

Further on, the path suddenly opens on a rocky cliff, called 'The 
Lover's Leap,' where the glen diverges into several valleys, formed 
by chains of lesser hills, but terminated at some distance by the 
highest mountains of the neighbourhood. In the midst of this land- 
scape appears the house, situated on a gentle slope on the edge of a 
wood, and surrounded by beautiful flower-gardens. From hence to 
the great waterfall, a distance of five miles, the road leads through 
ever varying scenes, which are more like those of beautiful nature 
than of a park. At length you reach a wood, and the rush of the 
distant waterfall meets your ear before you catch sight of it. It is 
inconsiderable, except after rain, but then it is magnificent. The 
lofty rocks are thickly covered on either side, with shrubs, the cas- 
cade dashes through their varied foliage, and falling into a basin, 
flows away through a beautiful meadow. Around this are venerable 
oaks, under which a house, suited to the character of the place, has 
been built. Here, refreshments are to be obtained, and it is the 
usual resort of the many parties of pleasure who come hither. Green 
footpaths lead still further into the wild mountain country; but as it 
was already dark, I was' obliged to return. On my way hither, I 
had gone over the greater distances in a gallop; and to avoid unne- 
cessary delay, had taken up the ragged boy who acted as guide, be- 
hind me, regardless of the wonderment of the passers by, who knew 
not what to make of so extraordinary a cavalcade. At night I was 
obliged to ride slowly along the stony road, till the moon rose, 
orange-coloured, behind the mountains, and half shrouded herself in 
evening mists. I reached the inn at Bray, tired and hungry, at 
eleven o'clock. 

August 31 st. 
I found this country inn so pleasant that I resolved to prolong my 
stay over to day— Sunday. Living at inns affords one a good oppor- 
tunity of observing the middle classes. Every man here shows him- 
self as he is, and seems to feel himself alone. I have already told 
you that English travellers of this class (I include all the inhabitants 
of the three kingdoms who have English manners and habits) usually 
pass their time, when not out of doors, in a common room called the 
coffee-room. In the evening this coffee-room is lighted with lamps; 
candles are carried, if called for, to the gentlemen who sit at the sepa- 



342 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

rate little tables. It has often surprised me that in a country in which 
luxury and refinement on all the wants of life are so universal, even 
in the best provincial inns (and often in London) tallow candles are 
commonly used. Wax candles are an unwonted luxury; and if you 
ask for them, you are treated with redoubled civility, but your bills 
are also doubled throughout. 

It is very diverting to observe the perfect uniformity with which 
all behave, as if machines out of one workshop. This is particularly 
observable in their eating: though placed at separate tables, and no 
individual taking the slightest notice of any other, they all seem to 
have exactly the same usages, exactly the same gastronomic tastes. 
Nobody eats soup, which, unless bespoken beforehand, is not to be 
had. (This is the reason, by-the-bye, for which my old Saxon ser- 
vant left me. He declared that he could not exist any longer in 
such a state of barbarism — without soup!) A large joint of roast 
meat is commonly carried from one to another, and each cuts off 
what he likes. This is accompanied by potatoes or other vegetables, 
boiled in water; and a 'plat de menage' filled with sauces is placed 
on every table; beer is poured out, and there, in a common way, ends 
the dinner. Only the luxurious eat fish before meat. 

But now follows the second stage: — the tablecloth is removed; 
clean plate, and knife and fork laid; wine and a wine-glass, and a 
few miserable apples or pears, with stony ship-biscuits, are brought: 
and now the dinner seems to begin to enjoy tranquillity and comfort. 
His countenance assumes an expression of satisfaction; apparently 
sunk in profound meditation, leaning back in his chair, and looking 
fixedly straight before him, he suffers a sip of wine to glide down his 
throat from time to time, only breaking the death-like silence by now 
and then laboriously craunching his rocky biscuits. 

When the wine is finished, follows stage the third, — that of diges- 
tion. All motion now ceases; his appetite being satisfied, he falls 
into a sort of magnetic sleep, only distinguishable from the natural 
by the open eyes. After this has lasted for half an hour or an hour, 
all at once it ceases; he cries out, as if under the influence of some 
sudden possession, 'Waiter, my slippers;' and seizing a candle, walks 
off gravely to his chamber to meet his slippers and repose. 

This farce acted by five or six men at once has often amused me 
more than a puppet-show; and I must add, that with the exception 
of the incident of the slippers, pretty nearly the same scene is repre- 
sented in the first clubs of the metropolis. I scarcely ever saw an 
Englishman read at dinner; I am not sure that they don't think it an 
act of indecorum — perhaps of impiety — like singing or dancing on 
a Sunday for instance. Perhaps, however, it is only a rule of dia- 
tetics converted by time into a iaw, which no vivacity of temper can 
break through. 

Englishmen who do not belong to the aristocracy, and are not very 
rich, usually travel without a servant by the mail or stage-coach, 
which deposits them at the inn. The man who waits on strangers 
to the coach, cleans their boots, See. has the universal appellation 
* Boots.' It is, accordingly, ' Boots' who brings your slippers, helps 
you to pull off your boots, and then departs, first asking at what time 
you will have, not as in Germany, your coffee, but your hot water to 
shave. He appears with it punctually at the appointed hour, and 
brings your clothes cleanly brushed. The traveller then hastens to 
dress himself and return to his beloved coffee-room, where the in- 



1KELAND, AND FRANCE. 313 

gredients of breakfast are richly spread upon his table. To this meal 
lie seems to bring more animation than to any other, and indeed I 
think more appetite ; for the number of cups of tea, the masses of 
bread and butter, eggs and cold meat, which he devours, awaken 
silent envy in the breast, or rather in the stomach, of the less capable 
foreigner. He is now not only permitted, but enjoined (by custom, 
his gospel) to read. At every cup of lea he unfolds a newspaper of 
the size of a table-cloth. Not a single speech, crim. con., murder or 
other catastrophe invented by the 'accident maker' in London, 
escapes him. 

Like one who would rather die of a surfeit than leave any thing 
uneaten which he had paid for, the systematic Englishman thinks 
that having called for a newspaper he ought not to leave a letter of 
it unread. By this means his breakfast lasts several hours, and the 
sixth or seventh cup is drunk cold. I have seen this glorious meal 
protracted so long that it blended with dinner; and you will hardly 
believe me when I assure you, that a light supper followed at mid- 
night without the company quitting the table. 

On this occasion several were assembled ; and I must remark, ge- 
nerally, that when that is the case, a very different scene is exhibited. 
The wine, instead of producing the lethargic reverie I have described, 
makes them rather too talkative. Something of the kind occurred 
to-day. Five or six travellers were very jovial, and having carried 
this a little too far, a violent quarrel arose among them, which, after 
long continued noise and confusion, ended, strangely enough, in their 
all falling foul of the waiter and pushing him out at the door. Upon 
this the host was forced to come in, and to beg pardon for the poor 
fellow, who was perfectly innocent. Not one of the men who were 
eating at their solitary tables took the slightest notice of this affray, 
but stared straight before them just as indifferently as if nothing 
were going on. 

Soon, however, one of them who had begun his dinner very late 
gave us a new scene. He was dissatisfied with the mutton they had 
brought him, and desired the waiter to tell the cook she was a d — — 

b . On receiving this communication, the Irishwoman lost all 

respect for the author of so sensible an insult; tore herself out of the 
arms of her companions who vainly attempted to hold her at the din- 
ing-room door, darted with doubled fists on the offender, and over- 
whelmed him with such a torrent of truly national epithets, that he 
turned pale and left the field, roaring " my slippers" as loud again as 
usual, and without further attempt at resistance hastily retreated to 
his chamber in the third story ; for, as you know, the bedrooms here 
are always under the roof, ' comme au Columbier.' 

When the late Grand Duke of W was in England, he was 

seized with the desire to travel alone and incognito by the ' stage,' as 
a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with English life. 
It amused him much : the next morning, however, he was not a little 
surprised, when the 'boots' brought him his clothes, at his saying, 
" I hope your Royal Highness slept well last night." He thought, 
however, he might have misunderstood, and taking no notice of the 
thing, continued his journey on the outside. The next morning, the 
same title. He now inquired into the matter, and found that a card 
with his name and rank was stitched to the inside of his cloak, and 
had destroyed his ' incognito.' What struck him the most doubtless 
was, that people troubled themselves so little whether a German so- 



344 LETTEKS ON ENGLAND, 

vereign prince sat on the top of the stage-coach or not. The common 
people in England care little about rank, — about foreign rank nothing. 
It is only the middle classes that are servile : they are delighted to 
talk to a foreign nobleman because they cannot get at their own 
haughty aristocracy. The English nobleman, even the least of the 
Lords, in the bottom of his heart thinks himself a greater man than 
the king of France. 

This mode of travelling, to a man who has any thing in view be- 
side mere change of place, or who does not feel himself flattered by 
the increased reverence of innkeepers and waiters, is certainly pre- 
ferable to the usual manner of making the grand tour. The diminu- 
tion of comfort and convenience is counterbalanced by so much that 
is instructive and agreeable, that one gains a hundredfold by the 
change. 

Dublin, September 1st. 

I returned, this time, by way of Kingston, along a rough but very 
romantic road, close to the sea. A crowd of beggars stood on the 
road. They were not, however, deficient in industry and activity, for 
an old woman among them was busily gathering up some white sand 
which had fallen from a cart. How I wished to open the treasures 
of our Sand-Golconda to this poor creature ! As I could not, I 
made her happy with a few pence, of which I always carry a cargo 
in my coat-pocket to throw out like corn among fowls ; for here 
every body begs. 

Kingston is a little town, consisting chiefly of the country houses 
of the opulent people of Dublin. The Lord Lieutenant sometimes 
resides here. Since the king's visit a harbour has been made, at 
which the men are still at work. The shallowness of Dublin Bay 
renders this very desirable; but its principal end now is to give work 
to the lower classes. The many ingenious inventions which are 
here applied, the four rail-roads running side by side, on which one 
horse can draw enormous loads, the chain windlasses by which huge 
masses are brought to hand and walled into the dam, and other 
things of the like kind, are uncommonly interesting and instructive. 
Several large ships are lying in the unfinished harbour, in which they 
already find deep water and safe anchorage. Among them I was 
struck by the appearance of a black hulk, which lay like a solitary 
ghost; it contained, as I was told, the convicts ordered for trans- 
portation to Botany Bay ; the transport ship which was to convey 
them had already arrived. This is no very severe punishment (de- 
ducting sea-sickness), and converts two-thirds of these criminals into 
useful citizens. Every government might (according to its local re- 
sources) create a Botany Bay ; but it will be long ere the principle of 
vengeance is banished from our systems of law or of religion. 

A monument has been erected at the entrance of the harbour, in 
honour of the King's memorable visit (memorable, that is, for its 
disappointing all hopes and expectations). It is designed and exe- 
cuted with the sort of taste which seems to lie like a curse on all the 
public buildings of Great Britain: it is a small, ridiculous stump of 
an obelisk, perched on the corner of a natural rock; it stands on four 
balls, and looks precisely as if the first blast of wind would roll it 
into the sea. One cannot suppress the wish that this may happen; — 
the sooner the better. The royal crown is stuck at the top like a 
lid on a mustard-pot, and the whole, contrasted with the noble 



IRELAND, AND FKANCE. 345 

dimensions of the harbour and surrounding buildings, is so small 
and 'mesquin' that it might be taken for the whim of a private 
man, but certainly never for a national monument. Perhaps the 
architect was a ' mauvais plaisant,' and meant it satirically: — as an 
epigram it is deserving of praise. 

The road from hence to Dublin is very fine, and covered with 
riders and carriages. I wondered not to find it watered, which 
makes the roads near London so agreeable. Probably it is only 
done when the Lord Lieutenant is here. The dust to-day was almost 
insufferable, and all the trees covered as if with chalk. 

I returned to Dublin just at the moment of a meeting of the 
' Catholic Association,' and alighted at the door of their house: 
unfortunately, however, neither Shiel nor O'Connell was present, so 
that there was no great attraction. Heat and bad smells, (' car 
l'humanite Catholique pue autant qu'une autre,) drove me out in a 
few minutes. 

In the evening I was better amused by the performances of some 
other charlatans, — a company of English horse-riders who are here. 
Mr. Adams, in his way indisputably ' le premier des hommes,' was 
leader of the ' Academy,' which deserved its name better than some 
others I could mention. 

It was pleasant to see about twenty elegantly dressed young men, 
all moving with nearly equal grace and dexterity — often bewildering 
the eye by the artful confusion, the variety, difficulty and extreme 
rapidity of their movements, forming a wild dissonance or chaos, 
and then resolving this into the most graceful harmony. Still more 
delightful were two inimitable clowns, whose limbs were perfectly 
at their disposal. The one was excellently supported by his piebald 
ass, which shamed the noblest horses in the precision with which he 
executed his feats; and the other on an instrument of his own inven- 
tion, produced a sort of music so truly mad, that even the mere 
tones excited resistless laughter. 

The performance was closed by a ' pas de deux' of the two clowns, 
danced on their hands and feet; the latter cutting capers in the air, 
while the former supported the weight of their bodies. Here the 
human form seemed obliterated; and the scene, frightful as a tale of 
Hoffman's, appeared to the bewildered spectator like the dance of 
two mad polypi. 

[Here some leaves of the correspondence are wanting.] 



LETTER XXXI. 

B m, in the West of Ireland, Sept. 5, 1828. 

Dear Julia, 

You make me laugh by your gratitude for my diligence in writing. 
Are you not aware that I can have no greater enjoyment ? I have 
hardly written a word before I feel myself at home, and new comfort 
and courage are infused into my heart. 

Do you remember the young parson at Bray? Though he con- 
verted the God of Mercy into the greatest of all tyrants, he himself 
is a very good-hearted fellow 'qui n'y entend pas malice.' He gave 
me such a hearty invitation to accompany him to his father's house 
in Connaught, — who, as he assured me, was no less hospitable than 

44 



346 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

rich, — that I consented, 'et m'y voilal' This wild part of Ireland, 
seldom visited by natives, never by foreigners, has such a bad name, 
that there is a proverb — ' Go to hell and Connaught!' It was there- 
fore a matter worthy of deliberation; but what deters others often 
attracts me; — such situations too I have often found the richest in 
amusement. The present promises me this in abundance, at least 
so far as novelty and strangeness go. 

Yesterday evening after dinner we left the metropolis in my car- 
riage. We had just a hundred-and-one miles to go. In England 
this is soon accomplished; here things are very differently managed, 
and it took us four-and-twenty hours. 

The scenery is strikingly like the Wendish districts of Lower 
Lusatia, whither my unlucky stars once drove me; except that there 
are thick woods, while here, with the exception of a few arid furs, 
they appear only to have been. Boundless plains are covered with 
bog and turf; the oakwood, thousands of years old, which is found 
sometimes at a great depth, fetches a high price for decorative furni- 
ture; snuff-boxes and ladies' ornaments are likewise made of it. The 
other part of the soil is sandy or wet: the dry lands are meagre and 
barren; but on the other hand the bog cultivation, which is admira- 
bly understood, is very successful. The bog is first levelled-, the 
projecting part being cut into squares of turf, and the soil then burnt 
and sown with corn. All the bogs appear to be remarkably deep: 
the principal crops are buckwheat, potatoes, and oats. The cabins 
of the inhabitants are beyond description wretched, and the appear- 
ance of all the flat country extremely poor, till you approach my 
friend's estate, where Nature becomes more smiling; and blue hills, 
the scene of many a wondrous tale, peep above the horizon. 

My host, Captain W , is one of the ' Notables' of his county, 

but his house is not better than that of a German nobleman of mo- 
derate estate. English elegance and English luxury are not to be 
thought of; wax lights are unknown; port and sherry, but above all 
* whiskey-punch,' are the only beverages : the coffee is detestable ; 
but the food excellent, nutritious, and plentiful. The house is not 
over-clean ; the small establishment very respectable from length of 
service, zeal and attachment, but of a somewhat unwashed and boor- 
ish appearance. 

From my chamber windows I penetrate into all the mysteries of 
the domestic economy, which is too modest to spread out the dung- 
hills as chief 'point de vue,' as in North Germany. The rain (for 
alas ! it does rain) runs merrily through my windows, and falls in 
romantic cascades from the window-sill to the floor, where an old 
carpet thirstily drinks the stream. The furniture is rather tottering ; 
but I have tables enough (a great matter to me with my multitude 
of things,) and the bed seems at least large and hard enough. In my 
chimney burns, or rather smoulders, capital turf, which not only 
gives heat, but covers everything with fine ashes, like an eruption 
of Vesuvius. All this does not sound brilliant ; — but how largely 
are these trifles outweighed by the patriarchal hospitality, the cheer- 
ful, easy, unaffected kindness of the family. It is as if my visit were 
a distinguished favour, for which all seem to feel indebted to me as 
for some real service. 

Sept. 6th. 
I like my host very much ; he is seventy-two years old, and still 



IRELAND, AND FRANC K. 347 

hale and vigorous as a man of fifty. He must have been very hand- 
some, and has given the world twelve sons and seven daughters, — 
all hy the same wife, who is still living, though just now too unwell 
for me to see her. Some of the sons and daughters have been long 
married, and the old man sees his grandsons of twelve at play with 
his youngest daughter of fourteen. The greater part of the family 
is now here, which makes the abode rather a noisy one ; this is in- 
creased by the musical talents of the daughters, who daily perform 
on an instrument horribly out of tune, — a circumstance which seems 
not to annoy them in the slightest degree.* The men generally talk 
about horses and dogs, and are somewhat uninstructed. To-day a 
country squire in the neighbourhood searched long and patiently in 
a map of Europe for the United States : — at last his brother-in-law 
gave him the fortunate suggestion of trying his luck on the map of 
the world. The occasion of the search was, that the old gentleman 

wanted to show me Halifax and B town, which latter takes its 

name from him. He laid the first stone of both during the Ameri- 
can war, in which he commanded seven hundred men, and loves to 
recal those days of his youth and importance. The scrupulous and 
chivalrous courtesy of his manners, the constant and ready sacrifice 
of his own convenience to others, are proofs of the education of times 
long passed, and marks his age more surely than his appearance does. 
• Our amusements for some days to come are arranged as follows. 
— In the morning we go to church ; the day after to the town of 
Galway, to see some horse-races, in which the poor animals not 
only run a German mile, but in the course of it have to leap several 
walls ! They are ridden by gentlemen. In the evening is a ball, at 
which I am promised a sight of all the beauty of the neighbourhood. 
To tell you the truth, touched as I am by the kindness shown me 
in this house, I rather dread a long stay : I should, however, vex 
these excellent, cordial people if I showed it ; ' Je m'execute done de 
bonne grace.' 

Sept. 7th. 

The manners here are so old-fashioned that the master of the house 
every day drinks to my health, and we have no napkins at table, for 
which pocket-handkerchiefs or the corners of the table-cloth are 
obliged to serve as deputies. 

We passed four" hours this morning in the church of the neigh- 
bouring town of Tuam, and saw four clergymen ordained by the 
archbishop. 

The English Protestant service differs much from ours: it is 
a strange mixture of Catholic ceremony and Protestant simplicity. 
Pictures on the walls are not suffered, — on the windows they are. 
The dress of the priests, even of the archbishops, consists only of a 
white surplice. On the other hand, the seat of the latter, built like 
a throne, covered with purple velvet and adorned with an arch- 
bishop's crown, stands ostentatiously opposite to the chancel. The 
sermon is read, and lasts very long. The most wearisome part, how- 
ever, both before and after it, is the endless repetition of antiquated 
and contradictory prayers, the burthen to which is occasionally re- 

* I have often had occasion to remark, that the love of music in England is a mere 
affair of fashion. There is no nation in Europe which plays music better or understands 
it worse. 



348 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

echoed in singing from the choir. These form a perfect course of 
English history. Henry the Eighth's ecclesiastical revolution, 
Elizabeth's policy, and Cromwell's puritanical exaggerations, meet 
and shake hands ; while certain favourite phrases are repeated every 
minute, many of which are more characteristic of cringing slaves 
prostrate in the dust before an eastern tyrant, than of Christian free- 
dom and dignity. 

The text was chosen, strangely enough, from the story of the pass- 
age of the evil spirits into the herd of swine j and after this had 
been discussed for an hour, the four priests were ordained. 

The old archbishop, who enjoys a high reputation for strict ortho- 
doxy, has a very dignified air, and a fine sonorous voice ; but the de- 
portment of the young divines displeased me exceedingly; it was 
disgustingly hypocritical. They continually wiped their eyes with 
their pocket-handkerchiefs, held them before their faces as if in the 
deepest emotion, answered with a broken voice ; — in short, Herrn- 
huters could not have acted it better : ' La grace n'y etoit pas ;' — of 
no kind. 

One of the oddest customs is, that every body during the short 
prayer at coming and going, turns himself to the wall, or into a cor- 
ner, as if he were doing something not fit to be seen. 

I must frankly confess it, — I do not understand how a reflecting 
man can be edified by such a service. And yet how beautiful, how 
elevating might the service of God be, if while we dismissed all ri- 
diculous and unmeaning ceremonies, we did not require an abstract 
worship, from which sense were utterly excluded, — an impossibility 
for creatures of sense ! Why should we not devote all our best pow- 
ers to the honour of him who gave them ? Why not employ every 
art in its highest perfection, in order to consecrate to God the no- 
blest, the finest works that the human faculties can produce ? 

I can imagine a congregation, whose piety is equally removed 
from mean servility and from arrogant conceit ; who meet to praise 
the infinite greatness and love of the Universal Father, and the won- 
ders of his creation — not to bring within the walls consecrated to 
him the hatred of bigotry and intolerance ; — whose creed demands 
from each man only that degree of belief which his own inward 
revelation makes possible to him. Before my fancy no longer float 
separate churches for Jews, and for fifty sorts of Christians ; but true 
temples of God and Man, whose gates at all times stand open to 
every human being, who when oppressed by the Earthly, seeks to 
have the Holy and the Heavenly within him, animated and sus- 
tained by all the aids and appliances of sense or spirit ; or who longs 
to pour out the overflowings of his heart, when filled with happiness 
and gratitude. 

Galway, Sept. Sth. 
We arrived very late on the ' race-course,' and saw little of this 
day's sport. The sight of the people was however extremely cu- 
rious and interesting to me. In many points of view this nation is 
really semi-barbarous. The universal want of decent clothing among 
the lower classes, even on festivals like the present ; their utter ina- 
bility to resist ardent spirits, so long as they have a penny in their 
pockets ; the sudden and continual wild quarrels and national pitched 
battles with the shillelah (a murderous sort of stick which every 
man keeps hidden under his rags), in which hundreds take part in a 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE, 349 

minute, and do not resist till several are left dead or wounded on the 
field ; the frightful war-whoop which they set up on these occasions ; 
the revenge for an affront or injury, which is cherished and inherited 
by whole villages : — on the other hand, the light-hearted careless- 
ness which never thinks of the coming day; the 'heart-felt merri- 
ment, forgetful of all want and suffering ; the kind hospitality which 
ungrudgingly shares their last morsel ; the unreserved cordiality with 
the stranger, who makes any advances to them ; the natural fluency 
and eloquence which they have ever at command ; — all are charac- 
teristics of a half-civilized people. 

Hundreds of drunken men accompanied our carriages as we drove 
from the race-course to the town, and more than ten times, fights 
arose among them. The confluence of guests was so great that we 
with difficulty found a miserable lodging : — our dinner was however 
good and very abundant. 

Galway was chiefly built by the Spaniards. Some descendants 
of the ancient families still exist, as do several very curious houses 
of that period. It struck me as characteristic, that in a town of 
forty thousand inhabitants there was not a single bookseller's shop 
or circulating library to be found. The suburbs and all the villages 
through which we passed on our way, were of a kind which I should 
vainly attempt to liken to any thing ever seen before: — pigsties are 
palaces in comparison ; and I often saw numerous groups of children 
(for the prolificness of the Irish people seems to keep pace with their 
wretchedness), naked as they came into the world, roll and paddle 
about with the ducks in the filthy kennels, with the greatest delight. 

Jlthenrye, Sept. 10th: Morning. 
I write to you this morning from the house of one of the sweetest 
women I ever saw in my life: an African too,— and as she tells me, 

by birth a Mademoiselle H . ' Que dites vous de cela ?' But 

more of her hereafter. You must now accompany me to the * race- 
course,' and see the running and leaping from the beginning. It is 
a remarkable sight of its kind, and exactly suited to a half-savage 
nation. I confess that it far exceeded my expectations, and kept me 
in a state of intense anxiety ; only one must leave pity and humanity 
at home, as you will see from what follows. — The race-course is an 
elongated circle. On the left side is the starting post j opposite to 
it, on the right, is the goal. Between them, at the opposite points 
of the circumference, are built walls of stone without mortar, five 
feet high and two broad. The course, two English miles in length, 
is run over once and a half. You see then, from my description, 
that the first wall must be leaped twice, the second only once in 
each heat. Many horses run, but none is declared winner till he 
has beaten the others in two heats ; so that this is often repeated 
three, four, or even five times, if a different horse comes in a-head 
each time. To-day they ran four times ; so that the winner, in a 
space of less than two hours, reckoning the intervals, ran twelve 
English miles at full speed and leaped the high wall twelve times ! — 
a fatigue which it is difficult to conceive how any horse can stand. 
Six gentlemen in elegant jockey dresses of coloured silk jackets and 
caps, leather breeches and top-boots, rode the ' race.' I had an ex- 
cellent hunter belonging to the son of my host, and could, therefore, 
by crossing the course, keep up perfectly well, and be present at 
every leap. 



350 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

It is impossible not to have a favourite on such occasions. Mine, 
and indeed that of the public, was an extremely beautiful dark bay, 
called Gamecock, ridden by a gentleman in yellow, — a handsome 
young man of good family, and a most admirable rider. 

After him theliorse which pleased me the most was a dark brown 

mare called Rosina, ridden by a cousin of Captain B ; a bad 

rider, in sky blue. The third in goodness, in my opinion, Killar- 
ney, was a strong, but not very handsome horse, ridden by a young 
man who showed more power of endurance than perfect horseman- 
ship : his dress was crimson. The fourth gentleman, perhaps the 
most skilful, though not the strongest of the riders, rode a brown 
horse, not remarkable in its appearance, and was dressed in brown. 
The other two deserve no mention, as they were * hors du jeu' from 
the beginning : they both fell at the first leap ; the one sustained a 
severe injury on the head, the other came off with a slight contu- 
sion, but was disabled from riding again. Gamecock, who darted 
off with such fury that his rider could hardly hold him in, and flew, 
rather than leapt, over the walls, with incredible bounds, won the 
first heat with ease. Immediately after him came Rosina without 
her rider, whom she had thrown, and took the remaining leaps of 
her own accord with great grace. Gamecock was now so decidedly 
the favourite that the bets were five to one upon him : but the result 
was far different from these expectations, and very tragical. After 
this noble animal had distanced the other two in two successive 
heats, and had achieved the two first leaps in the most brilliant man- 
ner, he set his foot, in the third, on a loose stone which one of the 
less skilful horses had pushed down as he fell, and which it was not 
permitted to remove out of the course. He fell backward upon his 
rider with such violence that both lay motionless, when the other 
riders came up, took not the slightest notice of them, and accom- 
plished the leap. After a few seconds Gamecock got up, but his 
rider did not recover his senses. A surgeon present soon pronounced 
his state to be hopeless; both his breast-bone and skull were fractur- 
ed. His old father, who stood by when the accident happened, fell 
senseless on the ground, and his sister threw herself with heart- 
rending cries on the yet palpitating though unconscious body. But 
the general sympathy was very slight. After the poor young man 
had been repeatedly bled, so that he lay on the turf weltering in his 
blood, he was taken away, and the race began again at the appointed 
time as if nothing had happened. 

The brown rider had been the first in the preceding heat, and 
hoped to win the last and decisive one. It was what the English 
call 'a hard race.' Both horses and men did their part admirably, 
they ran and leaped almost in rank. Killarney at last won only by 
a quarter of a head : — it was necessary therefore to run again. This 
last contest was of course the most interesting, since one of the two 
running must of necessity win everything. There was a great deal 
of betting, which at first was even. Twice did the victory appear 
decided, and yet at last terminated on the contrary side. At the 
first leap the horses were together ; before they reached the second 
it was evident that the brown was exhausted, and Killarney gained 
so much upon him that he reached the second wall more than a hun- 
dred paces before him. But here, contrary to all expectations, he 
refused to leap, and the rider had lost all power over him. Before 
he could be brought to obey, the brown came up, — made his leap 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 35 1 

well 5 and now putting out all his strength, was so much a-head that 
he seemed sure of winning. Bets were now ten to one. But the 
last wall was yet to cross, and this was fatal to him. The tired ani- 
mal, who had exhausted his last remaining strength in fast running, 
tried the leap willingly enough indeed, but had no longer power to 
effect it ; and half breaking down the wall, he rolled bleeding over 
and over, burying his rider under him so that it was impossible for 
him to rise. Killarney's rider had in the mean time brought his 
refractory horse into subjection, achieved the two remaining leaps 
amid the cheers of the multitude, and then rode at a foot pace, per- 
fectly at his ease and without a rival, to the goal. He was so ex- 
hausted, however, that he could scarcely speak. 

In the intervals between the preceeding heats I was introduced to 
many ladies and gentlemen, all of whom most hospitably invited 
me to their houses. I however preferred following my young host, 
who promised to show me the fairest of the fair, if I would give 
myself up to his guidance, and not object to riding ten miles in the 

dark. On the way he told me that this lady was called Mrs , 

and was the daughter of the late Dutch governor of , that she 

had had a complaint in the lungs, and was now staying in the soli- 
tary village of Athenrye, on account of the salubrity of its air. 

We did not arrive till ten ; and surprised her in her little cottage 
(for the place is miserable) at tea. 

I wish I could describe this sweet and lovely being to you in such 
a manner as to place her visibly before you; certain that you, like 
me, would love her at the first glance. But I feel that here all de- 
scription falls short: — all about her is heart and soul, and that is not 
to be described; — she was dressed in black, with the greatest sim- 
plicity, her dress up to the neck, but fitting closely to her beautiful 
form. Her person is slender and extremely youthful, full of gentle 
grace, and yet not without animation and fire in her movements. 
Her complexion is of a pure and clear brown, and has the soft polish 
of marble. More beautiful and brilliant black eyes, or teeth of more 
dazzling whiteness, I never beheld. Her mouth too, with the an- 
gelic, childlike character of her smile, is enchanting. 

Her refined unaffected good-breeding, the sportive graces of her 
gay and witty conversation, were of that rare sort which are innate, 
and must therefore please, whether in Paris or in Pekin, in town or 
country. The greatest experience of society could not give more 
ease or address, and no girl of fifteen could blush more sweetly, or 
jest more joyously. And yet her life had been the most simple and 
uniform, and her youth was rather the unfading spring of the soul 
than that of the body; for she was mother of four children, near 
thirty, and but just recovered from an attack on the lungs which had 
threatened to prove fatal. But the fire of all her movements, the 
lightning-flashes of her conversation, had all the freshness and all the 
power of youth, imparting a resistless charm to the gentleness of her 
nature. One felt that this was the child of a warmer and kindlier 
sun, of a more luxuriant soil, than are to be found in our misty 
climes. And indeed she felt the most melancholy longings after 
her native land, and a painful expression passed over all her lovely 
features as she said, she should never more breathe that balmy air 
charged with sweet odours. I was too much absorbed in looking at 
her to think of food, had she not, with all the kind activity of a good 
housewife, made preparations for entertaining us as well as she could 



352 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

in her little cabin. A table was set in the room in which we sat j 
so that our frugal meal caused no interruption to the conversation, 
and it was long after midnight ere we separated. 

It was not till I was in bed that I learned that, finding it impossible 
to get us beds in a place consisting of only a few cabins, this kind- 
hearted and unceremonious woman had quitted her own for me, and 
gone to sleep with her eldest daughter. 

Concerning her family, whose name was necessarily so striking to 

me, Mrs. herself could tell me but little. She had married 

Mr. , then a captain in the British army, in her twelfth year : 

immediately afterwards she lost her father, and embarked with her 
husband for Ireland, which she has never left. She had heard, in- 
deed that she had relations in Germany, but never corresponded 
with them. Three years ago she received a business letter from a 

cousin in A ~, announcing that her father's brother had died and 

had left her heir to his whole property. The indifference of this 
African child of nature went so far, that she had not only up to the 
present time left this letter unanswered, but, as she told me, had never 
been able to decypher the whole of it, as it was written in Dutch, and 
she had almost entirely forgotten the language. " I don't know the 
man," added she innocently, " and the money affairs I left to my hus- 
band." 

This bathing-place, Athenrye, is also one of the curiosities of Ire- 
land. From what I have already said, you will conclude that no 
Polish village can have a more wretched aspect. The cluster of 
cabins is on a bare hill rising out of the bog, without tree or bush, 
without an inn, without any convenience, inhabited only by ragged 
beggars, and by the few invalids who bring with them everything 
they want, and must send for even the most trifling article of food to 
Galway, a distance of twelve miles. Once it was otherwise ; and it 
saddens one to see at the further extremity of this wretched village 
the proud ruins of better times. Here stood a rich abbey, now over- 
grown with ivy : the arches which once protected the sanctuary lie 
in fragments amid the unsheltered altars and tombstones. Further 
on is a castle, with walls ten feet thick, in which King John held his 
court of justice when he came over to Ireland. 

I visited these ruins with a most numerous company : I do not ex- 
aggerate when I say that at least two hundred half-naked beings, 
two-thirds of whom were children, had collected round my carriage 
at a very early hour in the morning, doing nothing : they now 
thronged round me, all begging, and shouting, " Long life to your 
honour !" Every individual among them stuck faithfully by me, 
leaping over stones and brambles. The strangest compliment now 
and then resounded from the midst of the crowd : at last some called 
out, "Long life to the King !" On my return I threw two or three 
handfuls of copper among them ; and in a minute half of them, old 
and young, lay prostrate in the sand, while the others ran with all 
speed into a whiskey-shop, fighting furiously all the way. 

Such is Ireland ! Neglected or oppressed by the government, de- 
based by the stupid intolerance of the English priesthood, and marked 
by poverty and the poison of whiskey, for the abode of naked beg- 
gars ! — I have already mentioned that even among the educated class- 
es of this province, the ignorance appears, with our notions of 
education, perfectly unequalled : I will only give you one or two ex- 
amples. To-day something was said about magnetism, and no one 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. o5o 

present had ever heard the slightest mention of it. Nay, in B m, 

in a company of twenty persons, nobody knew that such places as 
Carlsbad and Prague existed. The information that they were situ- 
ated in Bohemia did not mend the matter : — Bohemia was not less 
unknown ; and in short, everything out of Great Britain and Paris 
was a country in the moon.* " And where do you come from?" asked 
one. " From Brobdignag," said I in jest. " O ! is that on the sea? 
Have they whiskey there?" asked another. The son of my host, 
whom I have repeatedly mentioned, asked me one day very seriously 
as we met some asses, whether there were any such animals in my 
country ? ** Ah ! but too many," replied I. 

B m, Sept. \-2th. 

Yesterday we returned home, tearing ourselvesaway from the love- 
ly African, who however had promised soon to follow us. To-day I 
took advantage of a leisure day to ride to Castle Hackett, a solitary 
hill in the neighbourhood, believed by the people to be a favourite 
resort of the fairies, or ' good people' as they call diem. No nation 
it more poetical, or more richly endowed with fancy. An old man 
who has the care of the woods of Castle Hackett, and has the repu- 
tation of knowing more than other men about the ' good people,' told 
us these circumstances connected with the death of his son, in the 
style of a romance. 

" I knew it," said he, " four days before — I knew he would die ; for 
as I was going home that evening about twilight, I saw them scouring 
in a wild chase over the plain : their red dresses fluttered in the 
wind ; and the lakes turned to ice as they came near, and walls and 
trees bowed themselves to the earth before them ; and they rode over 
the tops of the thicket as if it were over the green grass. In front 
rode the queen, on a white stag-like horse ; and by her I saw, with a 
shudder, my son, whom she smiled upon and caressed ; while he, with 
a fevered eye, looked wistfully at her, till all were past Castle Hackett. 
Then I knew it was all over with him ; — that same day he took to his 
bed ; — on the third I carried him to the grave. There was not a 
handsomer or a better lad in Connemara, and it was for that the 
queen chose him." 

The old man seemed so firmly and unaffectedly convinced of the 
truth of his story, that it would only have offended him to express 
the least doubt of it. He replied to our inquiries for further details 
with great readiness, and I promise myself the pleasure of giving 
you the most accurate description of the dress of the fairy queen for 
your next masked ball. At the. foot of this hill is a pretty country- 
seat; and the hill itself is covered to its summit with young and 
thriving plantations. On the top is a sort of artificial ruin, made 
of loose stones piled together, — laborious and almost dangerous to 
climb. The view from it is, however, worth the exertion. On two 
sides the eye wanders over the almost immeasurable plain; on the 
other two lies Lough Corrib, a lake thirty miles in length, behind 
which are the mountains of Clare; and in still remoter distance the 
romantic ridge of Connemara. The lake just at its middle bends 
inland like a river, and its waters gradually lose themselves between 
the lofty mountains, which seem to form a gateway for their en- 
trance. Just at this point the sun set; and Nature, who often 
rewards my love for her, displayed one of her most wondrous spec- 
tacles. Black clouds hung over the mountains, and the whole hea- 
* " Bohmische Dorfer." The jeu de mots ie inevitably lost.— Transl,. 

45 



354 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

vens were overcast. Only just at the point where the sun looked out 
from beneath the dusky veil, issued a stream of light which filled the 
whole ravine with a sort of unearthly splendour. The lake glittered 
beneath it like molten brass; while the mountains had a transparent, 
steel-blue lustre, like the gleam of diamonds. Single streaks of 
rose-coloured cloud passed slowly across this illumined picture over 
the mountains; while on both sides of the opened heavens, distant 
rain fell in torrents, and formed a curtain which shut out every 
glimpse of the remaining world. Such is the magnificence which 
Nature has reserved for herself alone, and which even Claude's pen- 
cil could never imitate. 

On our way home my young friend discoursed largely on the 

perfections of Mrs L . Among other things, he said, " Never 

with all her vivacity did I see, even for an instant, the least trace of 
impatience or ill-humour about her; never had a woman a sweeter 
temper." This word is, like 'gentle,' untranslatable. Only the 
nation which invented 'comfort' was capable of conceiving 'good 
temper,' for 'good temper' is to the moral what 'comfort' is to the 
physical man. It is the most contented, the most comfortable state 
of the soul: the greatest happiness both for those who possess it, and 
for those who feel its influence. Perhaps it is found in perfection in 
woman alone; for it is rather a passive than an active quality: and 
yet we must by no means confound it with mere apathy, which is 
either tedious, or exasperates one's anger and contempt; whereas 
'good temper' soothes and tranquillizes all who approach it. It is 
a truly kind, loving and cheerful principle; mild and balmy as a 
cloudless Mayday. With ' gentleness' in his own character, ' com- 
fort' in his house, and ' good temper' in his wife, the earthly felicity 
of man is complete. • Good temper,' in the highest sense, is doubt- 
less one of the rarest qualities; — the consequence of an absolute har- 
mony, or equilibrium of the moral powers, — the most perfect health 
of the soul. Great and striking single qualities cannot therefore be 
combined with it; for wherever one quality is predominant, the 
equilibrium is destroyed. It is possible to be most captivating, to 
inspire passionate love, admiration or esteem, without ' good tem- 
per;' — to be perfectly and lastingly amiable without it, it is impos- 
sible. The contemplation of harmony in all things has a salutary 
effect on the mind; often unconscious of the cause, the soul is glad- 
dened and refreshed by it, whatever be the sense through which it 
is communicated. A person therefore who is gifted with ' good 
temper,' affords us continual enjoyment, without ever awakening 
our envy, or exciting any vehement emotion. We gain strength 
from his tranquillity, courage from his cheerfulness, comfort from 
his resignation; we feel our anger vanish before his loving patience, 
and are finally the better and the happier for listening to the spiritual 
music of his harmony. 

How many words, you will say, to describe one! And yet, dear 
Julia, I have very imperfectly expressed what ' good temper' is. 

September \3th. 
The beautiful view of yesterday evening enticed me to take a 
nearer survey of what I had beheld at a distance. My obliging 
friend speedily fitted out an equipage for this purpose, a little 'char 
a banc,' which was drawn by two horses 'tandem' (one horse before 
another). We determined to visit Lake Corrib, Cong and its caverns, 
and to return in the night. After four hours smart trotting, and 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 355 

some little accidents to our frail tackle, we reached Cong, at a distance 
of twenty miles, where we ate a breakfast we had brought with us, 
of lobster prepared after the Irish fashion.* Knives and forks were not 
to be had, so that we adopted the Chinese mode of eating. We then 
set out to the caverns, accompanied as usual by a half-naked cortege. 

Every one of them was on the watch to do us some service: if I 
stooped to pick up a stone, ten or a dozen scrambled for it, and then 
asked for money; if there was a gate to open, twenty rushed to it, 
and expected a like reward. After I had given away all my small 
money, came one who affirmed that he had shown me some trifle or 
other. I unwillingly refused him, and told him my purse was empty. 
" Oh," said he, u a gentleman's purse can never be empty!"— no bad 
answer; for under the form of a compliment lurks a sort of reproach. 
"You look too much like a ' gentleman' not to have money, but if 
you are so ungenerous as not to give any, you are not a true gentle- 
man; and, if you really have none, still less are you one." The 
crowd felt this, and laughed till I bought my deliverance from him. 

But to return to the * Pigeon-hole.' It lies in the middle of a field, 
bare, and treeless, which, although flat, is covered with masses of 
limestone of a peculiar form, between which the scanty soil is with 
difficulty cultivated. These pieces of rock are as smooth as if po- 
lished by art, and look like stones regularly piled and half prepared 
for some colossal building. In this rocky plain, at about half a mile 
from Lough Corrib, is the entrance of the cave, like a broad dark 
well, in which thirty or forty steps, roughly hewn in the rock, lead 
down to the stream, which here flows subterraneously, making its 
way through long and romantic arches, till at length it rises into day, 
and turns a mill. It then buries itself a second time in the earth, 
and at length appears again as a broad, deep, and crystal river, and 
thus flows on till it falls into the lake. 

Not far from the cave before which we were now standing lives a 
' Donna del Lago' who pays the lord of the soil four pounds a-year 
for the privilege of showing the ' Pigeon-hole' to strangers. She 
was admirably fitted for the porteress of such an entrance to the 
nether world, and indeed the whole scene could not be better ' in cha- 
racter,' as the English say. We had descended the steps in the dark, 
and, heard the rush of invisible waters, when the gigantic, haggard 
old woman, with a scarlet cloak loosely thrown around her, long 
streaming white hair, and a firebrand in each hand, came down — 
the living original of Meg Merrilies. It was a wild scene ! Her flick- 
ering torches threw fitful gleams on the rolling water, and the lofty 
vaulted roof bristling with stalactites ; and now and then brought out 
the pale and squalid figures behind her with a broad red glare. She 
took some bundles of straw, and with words which sounded like an 
incantation, lighted them and threw them blazing into the stream. 
As they floated rapidly away, they disclosed new grottoes, more gro- 
tesque forms, and at length, after a hundred windings, disappeared 
in the distance like small tapers. We followed them, scrambling 
over the slippery stones as far as we could, and discovered here and 
there a trout in the ice-cold water. They have this peculiarity, that 
whatever bait may be offered them, no attempt to catch one has ever 
succeeded. The people of course think them enchanted. 

On emerging from the darkness to the spot where daylight breaks 
faintly, as down a shaft, you see the ivy and creeping plants hang 

* An excellent dish ! the receipt, viva voce. 



356 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

around the rocks in the most picturesque festoons and garlands. 
Here flocks of wild pigeons roost, whence the cave has its name. 
The popular superstition permits no sportsmen to molest them in 
this spot, so that they are fearless as in a dove-cote. 

We quitted this gloomy region, where all is close and oppressive, 
and wandered down to the broad sea-like lake, where all seems to lose 
itself in boundless space. This majestic body of water fills a basin 
of twelve German miles long, and at its widest point, three broad. It 
contains just as many islands as the year days ; at least so the natives 
assert, — I did not count them. It is bounded on two sides by the 
high mountains of Connemara ; on the others its waters are nearly 
level with the plain : the approach to it opposite to the mountains was, 
therefore, more beautiful than the return. The navigation of this 
lake is very dangerous from its numerous rocks and islands, and the 
sudden squalls which often arise upon it. We saw in a newspaper a 
short time ago, that a boat, having on board a butcher and his sheep, 
had gone down, and man and beast perished. We had a very calm, 
though not a bright day. When we landed, my companion went be- 
fore to give some orders ; while as the sun was setting, I visited the 
ruins of an abbey, which contained some striking remains of archi- 
tectural and sculptural beauty. . 

Ireland is studded with ruins of old castles and monasteries more 
thickly than any country in Europe, thoug-h they do not present such 
enormous masses as those in England. These old ruins (for unfor- 
tunately even here are many new ones) are constantly used by the 
people as places of burial, — a poetical idea, peculiar, I believe, to this 
nation. As there are none of those tasteless modern monuments 
which deform English churches, and the grave is marked only by a 
mound of earth, or at most a flat stone, the touching picture of human 
frailty is enhanced, not impaired, by this custom. The impression 
is, however, sometimes heightened into horror by the little heed paid 
by those who dig the graves to the earlier buried, whose skeletons 
are thrown out without ceremony as soon as there is a want of room. 
The ruins are consequently filled with heaps of skulls and bones 
thrown confusedly together, and sometimes placed in pyramids or 
other forms by children at play. I climbed over a heap of mingled 
stones and bones, and crawled up into a ruinous chamber of the first 
story, where I feasted myself on the strange romantic picture. On 
my left the wall had fallen in, and opened to the eye the beautiful 
landscape which surrounds the lake, with its bright-green foreground, 
the mountains in the distance, and on one side the house and the high 
trees in the park of the Macnamaras, who reside here. Before me 
was a window in good preservation, surrounded with carvings like 
' point d'Alencon ;' above it hung large bunches of deep purple black- 
berries pendant from their luxuriant branches, which crept in one 
continuous mass along the open wall. On the right, where the wall 
of the chamber remained perfect, was a low niche, which no doubt 
formerly contained a saint, but was now occupied by a skull; the 
empty eye-sockets were directed exactly towards the beautiful land- 
scape spread before it, as if its brilliancy and freshness had power to 
gladden even death itself. Following the same direction, I discovered 
a grated window just above the ground, which I had till then over- 
looked : it gave light to a spacious cellar, in which I descried a vast 
heap of bones, all arranged in the way I have mentioned, in various 
forms. The sunny landscape above, the dark charnel-house below, 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 357 

in which childhood sported with death, — it was a glance at once into 
life and the grave, — the joys of the one, and the unsympathizing calm 
of the other ; while the rays of the setting sun threw a cheering glow 
over the living and dead, like messengers from a fairer world. 

Our return in a dark night, with incessant rain, was fatiguing and 
unpleasant; we broke several springs of our carriage, and had all 

sorts of calamities to endure. We arrived at B after midnight, 

and to my real dismay found the good old Captain and the whole fami- 
ly still up, and waiting supper for us. The prodigal attentions and 
the infinite kindness of these excellent people daily put me to shame, 
and I continually admire to see that their cordial hospitality is not 
deformed by the slightest trace of ostentation. 

That my letter may not be too large, and cost too much postage, 
(for I have to pay some pounds sterling to the English post-office for 

my voluminous packets,) I close it before I leave B m. You will 

know me safe and well up to this point, and in the care of people 
whose hearts are like your own, however inferior to you they may 
be in mind and cultivation. — Heaven bless and preserve you. 

Your most faithful L. . 



LETTER XXXII. 

B m Sept 14th, 1828. 

Beloved Friend, 

Your sermon is excellent; your reasons are unanswerable; — but 
I happen to believe the contrary; and belief is, as you know, a thing 
which not only removes mountains, but often builds up such as it is 
impossible too see over. No conversion can consequently be effec- 
tual, be the subject what it may, till the opposite belief has already be- 
gun to totter. Till that point is reached, though you speak with the 
wisdom of Plato, and act with the purity of Jesus, every man will 
retain his belief, on which reason and good sense have ordinarily lit- 
tle influence. He who Avishes to produce any sudden change in the 
minds of men before they are already disposed to it, will either be 
confined as a madman, or stoned and crucified as a martyr. History 
leaches us this in every page. What is applicable universally, is 
also applicable individually, — and now, 'parlez moi raison si vous 
l'osez.' — But, seriously speaking, a man who has the misfortune to 
be born with a too independent spirit, and who cares little for com- 
mon opinion, merely because it is common, should remain unchang- 
ed all his life.. The consequences of such a turn of mind, and the 
hostilities it excites, becomes painful, and at length dangerous, only 
when he grows weak and ceases to be self-sustained; when instead 
of despising, as before, the opinions of others, he begins to fear thern. 
The multitude are quick to perceive the change, and instantly begin 
a steady and vigorous pursuit of the game which flees before them, 
and which, so long as it stood at bay and looked them boldly in the 
face, they dared not openly attack. For getting on in the world, 
there is no better maxim than this, 'Bouche riante, et front d'airain, 
et vous passez par tout.' We Germans are almost always too earn- 
est as well as too timid, and are capable of only momentary strug- 
gles against these defects, which, like all such attempts, generally 
overshoot the mark. This makes us so fond of retirement and of 
converse with our own fancy, — our best and faithfullest companion; 
— we are sovereign lords of the regions of air, as Madame de Stael 



358 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

says. The world, as it is, does not please us, and we are just as little 
fitted to please the world. Retirement, and with it freedom, are 
therefore what we love best. 

We have had a strange accomplishment of a prophecy. — Miss 
Kitty, one of my host's daughters, and a very nice girl, had her fortune 
told yesterday by gipseys. I was by, and heard the woman say to her, 
among many common-place predictions, "Be upon your guard; for 

a shot will be fired in at your window, and your stay in B will 

not be long after that." We thought th6 prediction rather serious, 
and communicated it to the family on our return, but were only 
laughed at. The next morning early, we were all alarmed by the 
firing of two shots; Miss Kitty rushed down stairs half dressed, and 
nearly fainting from terror; and every one in the house ran to see 
what was the matter. We found that two of Kitty's younger bro- 
thers, who had been on a visit to Mrs. M , had returned quite 

unexpectedly to fetch their sister, had played the silly trick of firing 
their fowling-pieces up at her window, and had done it so awkward- 
ly that they had broken it. They were soundly rated, and then 
drove off with Miss Kitty; so that everything happened precisely as 
the old womanj-^-Heaven only knows how! — had seen in the lines of 
her hand. 

September \bth. 

I was a little hypochondriacal and dull yesterday, but to-day I 
am better in health, and consequently full of philanthropical senti- 
ments, — virtuous, 'faute d'occasion de pecher,' and merry, because I 
can laugh at myself ' faute de trouver quelque chose de plus ridicule.' 

Meanwhile the scene here has altered. The fair African is arriv- 
ed, and we immediately set out, ten in number, on a ride; in the 
course of which the old Captain showed us his bog cultivation and 
his draining with all the ardour of a young man. He was as much 
enchanted by a field of potatoes as I by my fair companion. Point- 
ing to a good crop, he cried out with enthusiasm, "Is not that a 
magnificent sight?" it certainly never came into his head that we 
could be thinking of other things, and that we assented only out of 
civility. I found some peasants for my plan of colonization; they 
were all eager to go, but unfortunately had not a penny in the world 
in furtherance of such a scheme. One runs no risk in promising 
them that they will find everything better than they have here, where 
a man must subsist from half an acre of land; and if he be ever so 
willing to seek work abroad, cannot find it. Those of them who 
are best off live in dwellings which our peasants would think too 
bad for their cows or horses. I visited one of these cabins and found 
the walls built of rude blocks of stone, with moss stuffed into the in- 
terstices, and a roof covered partly with straw, partly with turf. 
The floor consisted of the bare earth; there was no ceiling, and the 
roof admitted the light in many places. Chimneys seem to be es- 
teemed a useless luxury. The smoke ascended from the open hearth, 
and found its way through the holes, which served as windows. A 
lower shed on the right was the bed-room of the whole family; a si- 
milar one on the left, the habitation of the pig and the cow. The 
house stood in the middle of a field, without garden, and utterly bare, 
and this they all called an excellent house. 

When we got home our pretty visitor's hands were nearly frozen, 
even at this season. They were perfectly white and insensible, and 
were rubbed a quarter of an hour before the blood and life returned 
to them. 4 C'est le sang Africain.* She is in perfect comfort only 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 359 

when seated close to a glowing turf fire, which would scorch any 
body elsej then she recovers her child-like freedom and sportiveness, 
which sometimes carries even me away with it. 

September \7th. 

To-day Mr L came to visit us. How strangely are the good 

things of this world distributed! * * * 

He is a furious Orangeman: it was to be expected that such a cha- 
racter as his would range itself on the side of injustice, and delight 
in party rage. But on what principles! As this is a specimen of the 
height to which the spirit of party has reached, and the shameless- 
ness with which it dares to avow itself, I will give you the quintes- 
sence of his conversation. 

U I have served my king for nearly thirty years in almost every 
part of the world, and want rest. Nevertheless, it is my most ardent 
wish, which I daily pray God to grant, that I may live to see a 
1 good sound rebellion' in Ireland. If I were called out to serve 
again, or if I were to lay down my life the very day it broke out, I 
should make the sacrifice willingly, could I but be sure that the 
blood of five millions of Catholics would flow at the same time with 
my own. Rebellion! — that's the point at which I want to see them, 
at which I wait for them, and to which they must be led on, that we 
may make an end of them at once; for there can be no peace in Ire- 
land till the whole race is exterminated, and nothing but an open 
rebellion, and an English army to put it down, can effect this!" — 
Would it not be right to confine such a wicked madman for life, dear 
Julia, and give his sweet wife to some one more worthy of her? 
The youthful and uncorrupted hearts of the sons of my host were 
roused as much as my own: they manfully combatted these, diaboli- 
cal principles ; but this exasperated the maniac Orangeman still 
more, till at length all were silent. Several had early dropped off 
from table to escape from such revolting conversation. 

September \Sth. 

Mr L 's visit fortunately lasted only a few days, and we are 

once more alone. We took advantage of our recovered freedom to 

make an excursion of twenty miles to Mount B , the beautiful 

residence of a nobleman, and did not get back till late at night. The 
park at Mount B affords a perfect study for the judicious distri- 
bution of masses of water, to which it is so difficult to give the 
character of grandeur and simplicity that ought always to belong to 
them. It is necessary to study the forms of nature for the details j 
but the principal thing is never to suffer an expanse of water to be 
completely overlooked, or seen in its whole extent. It should break 
on the eye gradually, and if possible lose itself at several points at 
the same time, in order to give full play to the fancy, — the true art 
in all landscape gardening. The lord of the demesne, who is rich, 
possesses a numerous collection of pictures, some of which are ex- 
cellent. There is a winter landscape of Ruysdaal's, the only one of 
its kind which I remember to have seen by that master. The cha- 
racter of the cold foggy air, and the crisp frozen snow, are so per- 
fectly given, that I almost shivered before it ; I felt at least that the 
flickering blaze in the fire-place beneath had a double charm. A 
fine and undoubted Rubens, the ' Miraculous Draught of Fishes,' is 
chiefly remarkable for a strange singularity. St Peter has a scarlet 
wig, and yet the general expression of the picture is not injured. It 



360 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

has the effect of a glory, and seems to shed light around. I should 
think it was a trial of skill, perhaps undertaken by the painter in 
consequence of some jest, 'pour prouver la difficulte vaincue.' A 
very laborious landscape on wood, by an unknown hand, was for- 
merly in the private collection of Charles L, whose cipher and name, 
with the crown above, are branded on the back. The gem of the 
collection appeared to me a picture of Rembrandt's, supposed to be 
the portrait of an Asiatic Jew; it is, at any rate, the ideal of one. 
The reality of the eyes and their blighting look is almost terrific ; 
the dark and sinister, yet sublime expression of the whole is in- 
creased by the inky blackness of the rest of the picture, out of 
which the fiery eyes and satanic mouth look as if peeping forth 
frightfully from the midst of Egyptian night. 

After breakfast several hunters and racers were brought out, and 
we exhibited our feats of horsemanship to the ladies. The hunters 
of this country are not, perhaps, quite so swift as the best English 
ones, but they are unequalled at leaping, to which they are trained 
from their youth. They go up to a wall with the most perfect com- 
posure, and mount it with their fore and hind feet like a dog. If 
there is a ditch on the other side, they leap that also by giving them- 
selves a fresh ' elan' on the top of the wall. The less the rider at- 
tempts to help a well trained horse the better. If he keeps a steady 
light rein upon him he may safely leave him to himself. 

I don't know whether these details of horsemanship are very in- 
teresting to you, but as my letters are at the same time" my journal 
(for how should I find time to keep any other?) you must be so kind 
as to receive with indulgence whatever has any interest, not only for 
you, but for myself. 

Galwayi Sept. \9th y Evening. 

You know that my determinations are often of a very sudden na- 
ture, — my pistol-shots, as you used to call them. I have just dis- 
charged one. You may think that I did not quit such cordial friends 
without great regret, but I had resolved to go, and adhered steadily 
to my resolution. To avoid the delay of sending for post-horses, I 
rode with James for the last time on 'Doctor,' his admirable hunter, 
to Tuam, leaving all needful arrangements to my servant. I intend- 
ed to leave Tuam by the mail, but it was not its day for going, and 
no species of conveyance to Galway was to be had, except the little 
two-wheeled cart of the man who carries the letter-bags, in which 
there is room for two passengers. I did not deliberate long, but 
giving James a last shake by the hand, sprang into this frail vehicle, 
and 'clopin-clopant,' away rattled the old horse with us through the 
streets. The other passenger was a fine athletic young man, well 
dressed, with whom I soon got into an interesting conversation on 
the beauties and wonders of his country, and the character of his 
countrymen. He was not long without affording me a fresh proof 
of the hearty kindness and civility of the latter. I was very lightly 
dressed, and heated with riding, so that I suffered from the cold 
wind. I offered the driver some money to surrender his cloak to 
me: on a nearer view, however, this appeared so fearfully dirty and 
disgusting, that I could not bring myself to put it on. The young 
man immediately took off a magnificent great-coat of vast dimen- 
sions, and almost forced me to take it, protesting that he never 
caught cold, that he could sleep in the water without taking any 
harm, and that he had put on the great-coat only because he did not 



IHKLAND AND FRANCE. 361 

know what to do with it. This friendly act of his made us more 
quickly acquainted than we should otherwise have been; and the 
time passed away, amid all sorts of talk, much more rapidly than I 
had ventured to hope; for the distance was six German miles, the 
road very rough, the equipage as bad as possible, the seat uneasy, 
the country monotonous and dreary. Not a hill, not a tree to be 
seen; only a network of walls drawn over the whole surface. Every 
field is enclosed within walls of loose stones without mortar, but so 
well constructed, that unless violently shaken they stand very firm. 
Many ruins of castles were visible, but in such aflat, desert plain, with- 
out one bush or bough to break it, they produced no romantic effect. 

We found the ragged potatoe-eating people everywhere gay and 
joyous. They always beg, to be sure, but they beg laughing, with 
wit, humour, and the drollest expressions, without importunity, and 
without ' rancune' if they get nothing. Most striking, amid such 
singular poverty, is the no less singular honesty of these people; 
perhaps, however, the one arises out of the other, for luxury makes 
us covetous, and the poor man can often bear the privation of ne- 
cessaries more easily than the rich of superfluities. 

We saw a number of labourers sitting by the road-side on heaps 
of stone, which they were breaking. My companion said, *' Those 
are conquerors; their whole business is to break in pieces and de- 
stroy, and they rise on the ruins they make." Meanwhile our dri- 
ver blew his horn to announce the post, for which, as with us, every- 
thing must make way: the tone, however, came forth with such dif- 
ficulty and sounded so piteously, that we all laughed. A pretty 
boy, of about twelve, looking like a personification of happiness and 
joy, though half naked, was sitting on a heap of stones, hammering. 
He shouted with mischievous glee, and called out to the angry driver, 
" Oh ho, friend! your trumpet has caught cold; it is as hoarse as my 
old grandmother: cure it directly with a glass of potheen, or it 
will die of a consumption before you reach Galway!" A loud laugh 
from all the labourers followed as chorus. "There," said my com- 
panion, " there you see our people,— starvation and laughter, — that 
is their lot. Would you believe that, from the number of labourers 
and the scarcity of labour, not one of these men earns enough to buy 
sufficient food; and yet every one of them will spare something to 
his priest: and if you go into his cabin, will give you half of his 
last potatoe and a joke into the bargain." 

We now approached the Galway mountains, over which the sun 
was setting magnificently. This is a spectacle which I can never be- 
hold unmoved; it always enchants me, and leaves a feeling of calm 
and security, arising from the certainty that this language, which 
God himself speaks to us, cannot lie, though human revelations be 
but piece-meal, differently understood by every different interpreter, 
and often abused to the purposes of cunning and selfishness. 

We alighted at the same inn at which I had been during the races; 
and to make some return for my young friend's civility, I invited him 
to sup with me. It was late when we separated, — probably forever; 
but such acquaintanceships I like; they leave no time for dissem- 
bling: ignorant of each other's social relations, each values in the 
other only the man. Whatever each obtains from the other of kind 
feeling or good opinion, he owes to himself alone. 

46 



362 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Sept. 20th, Morning. 

I had hoped my carriage would have arrived during the night, but 
it is not yet come; and I therefore employed my leisure in taking a 
more perfect survey of this ancient city. I was greatly assisted by 
some fragments of an old Chronicle, which I accidentally picked 
up in a grocer's shop, where I made some inquiries. In an obscure 
corner of the town stands a house of extreme antiquity, over the 
door of which are still to be seen a skull and cross-bones, remarka- 
bly well sculptured, in black marble. This house is called "The 
Cross-bones," and its tragical history is as follows. 

In the fifteenth century, James Lynch, a man of old family and 
great wealth, was chosen mayor of Galway for life; — an office which 
was then nearly equal to that of a sovereign in power and influence. 
He was reverenced for his inflexible rectitude, and loved for his con- 
descension and mildness. But yet more beloved, — the idol of the 
citizens and their fair wives, — was his son, according to the Chroni- 
cle, one of the most distinguished young men of his time. To per- 
fect manly beauty and the most noble air, he united that cheerful 
temper, that considerate familiarity, which subdues while it seems 
to flatter, — that attaching grace of manner, which conquers all hearts 
without an effort, by its mere natural charm. On the other hand, 
his oft-proved patriotism, his high-hearted generosity, his romantic 
courage, and complete mastery in all warlike exercises, forming part 
of an education singular in his age and country, secured to him the 
permanency of an esteem which his first aspect involuntarily bespoke. 

So much light was not without shadow. Deep and burning pas- 
sions, a haughty temper, jealousy of all rival merit, rendered all his 
fine qualities only so many sources of danger to himself and others. 
Often had his stern father, although proud of such a son, cause for 
bitter reproof, and for yet more anxious solicitude about the future. 
But even he could not resist the sweetness of the youth, — as quick 
to repent as to err, and who never for a moment failed in love and 
reverence to himself. After his first displeasure was past, the de- 
fects of his son appeared to him as they did to all others, only spots 
on the sun. He was soon still further tranquillized by the vehementand 
tender attachment which the young man appeared to have conceived 
for Anna Blake, the daughter of his best friend, and a girl possessing 
every lovely and attaching quality. He looked forward to their union 
as the fulfilment of all his wishes. But fate had willed it otherwise. 

While young Lynch found more difficulty in conquering the heart 
of the present object of his love than he had ever experienced before, 
his father was called by business to Cadiz ; — for the great men of 
Galway, like the other inhabitants of considerable sea-ports in the 
middle ages, held trade on a large scale to be an employment nowise 
unworthy even men of noble birth. Galway was at that time so 
powerful and so widely known, that, as the Chronicle relates, an 
Arab merchant, who had long traded to these coasts from the East, 
once inquired " in what part of Galway Ireland lay ?" 

After James Lynch had delegated his authority to trusty hands, 
and prepared every thing for a distant journey, with an overflowing 
heart he blessed his son, wished him the best issue to his suit, and 
sailed for his destination. Wherever he went, success crowned his 
undertakings. For this he was much indebted to the friendly ser- 
vices of a Spanish merchant named Gomez, towards whom his noble 
heart conceived the liveliest gratitude. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 363 

It happened that Gomez also had an only son, who, like Edward 
Lynch, was the idol of his family, and the darling' of his native city, 
though in character, as well as in external appearance, entirely dif- 
ferent from him. Both were handsome ; but Edward's was the 
beauty of the haughty and breathing Apollo ; Gonsalvo's of the se- 
rene and mild St. John. The one appeared like a rock crowned 
with flowers 5 the other like a fragrant rose-covered knoll, threatened 
by the storm. The Pagan virtues adorned the one ; Christian gen- 
tleness and humility the other. Gonsalvo's graceful person ex- 
hibited more softness than energy ; his languid dark blue eyes, more 
tenderness and love than boldness and pride ; a soft melancholy 
overshadowed his countenance, and an air of voluptuous suffering 
quivered about his smiling lips, around which a timid smile rarely 
played, like a gentle wave gliding over pearls and coral. His mind 
corresponded to such a person : loving and endearing, of a grave and 
melancholy serenity, of more internal than external activity, he 
preferred solitude to the bustle and tumult of society, but attached 
himself with the strongest affection to those who treated him with 
kindness and friendship. His inmost heart was thus warmed by a 
fire, which, like that of a volcano buried too deep to break out at 
the surface, is only seen in the increased fertility of the soil above, 
which it clothes in the softest green, and decks with the brightest 
flowers. Thus captivating, and easily captivated, was it a wonder 
if he stole the palm even out of the hand of Edward Lynch ? But 
Edward's father had no such anticipations. Full of gratitude to 
his friend, and of affection for his engaging son, he determined to 
propose to the old Gomez a marriage between Gonsalvo and his 
daughter. The offer was too flattering to be refused. The fathers 
were soon agreed ; and it was decided that Gonsalvo should accom- 
pany his future father-in-law to the coast of Ireland, and if the in- 
clinations of the young people favoured the project, their union 
should take place at the same time with Edward's, after which 
they should immediately return to Spain. Gonsalvo, who was just 
nineteen, accompanied the revered friend of his father with joy. 
His young romantic spirit enjoyed in silent and delighted anticipa- 
tion the varying scenes of strange lands which he was about to 
see ; the wonders of the deep which he would contemplate j the 
new sort of existence of unknown people with whom he was to be 
connected; and his warm heart already attached itself to the girl, of 
whose charms her father gave him, perhaps, a too partial description. 

Every moment of the long voyage, which at that time abounded 
with dangers and required a much longer period than now, in- 
creased the intimacy and mutual attachment of the travellers: and when 
at length they descried the port of Galway, the old Lynch congrat- 
ulated himself not only on the second son which God had sent him, 
but on the beneficial influence which the unvarying gentleness of the 
youth would have on Edward's darker and more vehement character. 

This hope appeared likely to be completely fulfilled. Edward, who 
found all in Gomez that was wanting in himself, felt his own nature 
as it were completed by his society ; and as he had already learned 
from his father that he was to regard him as a brother, their friend- 
ship soon ripened into the warmest and most sincere affection. 

But not many months had passed before some uneasy feelings 
arose in Edward's mind to trouble this harmony. Gonsalvo had be- 
come the husband of his sister, but had deferred his return to Spain 



364 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

for an indefinite time. He was become the object of general admi- 
ration, attention, and love. Edward felt that he was less happy than 
formerly. For the first time in his life neglected, he could not con- 
ceal from himself that he had found a successful rival of his former 
universal and uncontested popularity. But what shook him most fear- 
fully, what wounded his heart no less than his pride, what prepared 
for him intolerable and restless torments, was the perception, which 
every day confirmed, that Anna, whom he looked upon as his, — 
though she still refused to confess her love, — that his Anna had ever 
since the arrival of the handsome stranger grown colder and colder 
towards himself. Nay, he even imagined that in unguarded moments 
he had seen her speaking eyes rest, as if weighed down with heavy 
thoughts, on the soft and beautiful features of Gomez, and a faint 
blush then pass over her pale cheek ; but if his eye met hers, this 
soft bloom suddenly become the burning glow of fever. Yes, he 
could not doubt it ; her whole deportment was altered : capricious, 
humoursome, restless, sometimes sunk in deep melancholy, then sud- 
denly breaking into fits of violent mirth, she seemed to retain only 
the outward form of the sensible, clear-minded, serene, and equal 
tempered girl she had always appeared. Everything betrayed to 
the quick eye of jealousy that she was the prey of some deep-seated 
passion, — and for whom ? — for whom could it be but for Gomez ! 
for him, at whose every action it was evident the inmost cords of 
her heart gave out their altered tone. It has been wisely said, that 
love is more nearly akin to hate than to liking. What passed in 
Edward's bosom was a proof of this. Henceforth it seemed his sole 
enjoyment to give pain to the woman he passionately loved : and now, 
in the bitterness of his heart, held guilty of all his sufferings. 
Wherever occasion presented itself, he sought to humble and to em- 
barrass her, to sting her by disdainful pride, or to overwhelm her 
with cutting reproaches ; till, conscious of her secret crime, shame 
and anguish overpowered the wretched girl, and she burst into tor- 
rents of tears, which alone had power to allay the scorching fever of 
his heart. But no kindly reconciliation followed these scenes, and, 
as with lovers, resolved the dissonance into blessed harmony. The 
exasperation of each was only heightened to desperation : and when 
he at length saw enkindled in Gomez, — so little capable of conceal- 
ment, — the same fire which burnt in the eyes of Anna ; when he 
thought he saw his sister neglected and himself betrayed by a ser- 
pent whom he had cherished in his bosom, — he stood at that point 
of human infirmity, of which the All-seeing alone can decide whether 
it be madness, or the condition of a still accountable creature. 

On the same night in which suspicion had driven Edward from 
his couch, a restless wanderer, it appears that the guilty lovers had 
for the first time met in secret. According to the subsequent con- 
fession of Edward, he had concealed himself behind a pillar, and had 
seen Gomez, wrapped in his mantle, glide with hurried steps out of 
a well-known side-door in the house of Anna's father, which led 
immediately to her apartments. — At the horrible certainty which 
now glared upon him, the fury of hell took possession of his soul : 
his eyes started from their sockets, the blood rushed and throbbed 
as if it would burst his veins, and as a man dying of thirst pants for 
a draught of cooling water, so did his whole being pant for the blood 
of his rival. Like an infuriate tiger he darted upon the unhappy 
youth, who recognized him, and vainly fled. Edward instantly 



IIIELAND, AND FRANCE. 365 

overtook him, seized him, and burying his dagger a hundred times, 
with strokes like lightning-flashes, in the quivering body, gashed 
with satanic rage the beautiful features which had robbed him of his 
beloved, and of peace. It was not iill the moon broke forth from 
behind a dark cloud, and suddenly lighted the ghastly spectacle be- 
fore him, — the disfigured mass, which retained scarcely a feature of 
his once beloved friend, the streams of blood which bathed the body 
and all the earth around it, — that he waked with horror as from some 
infernal dream. But the deed was done, and judgment was at hand. 
Led by the instinct of self-preservation, he fled, like Cain, into 
the nearest wood. How long he wandered ihere he could not recol- 
lect. Fear, love, repentance, despair, and at last madness, pursued 
him like frightful companions, and at length robbed him of con- 
sciousness, — for a time annihilating the terrors of the past in forget- 
fulness ; for kind nature puts an end to intolerable sufferings of mind, 
as of body, by insensibility or death. 

Meanwhile the murder was soon known in the city; and the fear- 
ful end of the gentle youth, who had confided himself, a foreigner, 
to their hospitality, was learned by all with sorrow and indignation. 
A dagger, steeped in blood, had been found lying by the velvet cap 
of the Spaniard, and not far from it a hat, ornamented with plumes 
and a clasp of gems, showed the recent traces of a man who seemed 
to have sought safety in the direction of the wood. The hat was 
immediately recognized as Edward's; and as he was nowhere to be 
found, fears were soon entertained that he had been murdered with 
his friend. The terrified father mounted his horse, and, accompa- 
nied by a crowd of people calling for vengeance, swore solemnly 
that nothing should save the murderer, were, he even compelled to 
execute him with his own hands. 

We may imagine the shouts of joy, and the feelings of the father, 
when at break of day Edward Lynch was found sunk under a tree, 
living, and although covered with blood, yet apparently without any 
dangerous wound. We may imagine the shudder that ran through the 
crowd, — but the feelings of the father we cannot imagine, — when, res- 
tored to sense, he embraced his father's knees, declared himself the 
murderer of Gonsalvo, and earnestly implored instant punishment. 

He was brought home bound, tried before a full assembly of the 
magistrates, and condemned to death by his own father. But the 
people would not lose their darling. Like the waves of the tem- 
pest-troubled sea, they filled the market-place and the streets, and 
forgetting the crime of the son in the relentless justice of the father, 
demanded with threatening cries the opening of the prison and the 
pardon of the criminal. During the night, though the guards were 
doubled, it was with great difficulty that the incensed mob were 
withheld from breaking in. Towards morning, it was announced to 
the mayor that all resistance would soon be vain, for that a part of 
the soldiers had gone over to the people ; — only the foreign guard 
held out, and all demanded with furious cries the instant liberation 
of the criminal. 

At this, the inflexible magistrate took a resolution, which many 
will call inhuman, but whose awful self-conquest certainly belongs 
to the rarest examples of stoical firmness. — Accompanied by a priest, 
he proceeded through a secret passage to the dungeon of his son ; 
and when, with newly-awakened desire of life, excited by the sym- 
pathy of his fellow-citizens, Edward sunk at his feet, and asked 



366 LKTTERS ON ENGLAND, 

eagerly if he brought him mercy and pardon ? The old man replied 
with unfaultering voice, " No, my son, in this world there is no 
mercy for yoir: your life is irrevocably forfeited to the law, and at 
sunrise you must die. One-and-twenty years have I prayed for your 
earthly happiness, — but that is past, — turn your thoughts now to 
eternity ; and if there be yet hope there, let us now kneel down 
together and implore the Almighty to grant you mercy hereafter ; — 
but then I hope my son, though he could not live worthy of his father, 
will at least know how to die worthy of him." With these words 
he rekindled the noble pride of the once dauntless youth, and after a 
short prayer, he surrendered himself with heroic resignation to his 
father's pitiless will. 

As the people, and the greater part of the armed men mingled in 
their ranks, now prepared, amidst more wild and furious menaces, 
to storm the prison, James Lynch appeared at a lofty window ; his 
son stood at his side with the halter round his neck. " I have sworn," 
exclaimed the inflexible magistrate, "that Gonsalvo's murderer 
should die, even though I must perform the office of the executioner 
myself. Providence has taken me at my word; and you, madmen, 
learn from the most wretched of fathers that nothing must stop the 
course of justice, and that even the ties of nature must break before it." 

While he spoke these words he had made fast the rope to an iron 
beam projecting from the wall, and now suddenly pushing his son 
out of the window, he completed his dreadful work. Nor did he 
leave the spot till the last convulsive struggles gave certainty of the 
death of his unhappy victim. 

As if struck by a thunder-clap, the tumultuous mob had beheld the 
horrible spectacle in death-like silence, and every man glided as if 
stunned to his own house. From that moment the mayor of Galway 
resigned all his occupations and dignities, and was never beheld by 
any eye but those of his own family. He never left his house till 
he was carried from it to his grave. Anna Blake died in a convent. 
Both families in course of time disappeared from the earth ; but the 
skull and cross-bones still mark the scene of this fearful tragedy. 

Limerick, Sept. 2lst. 

At ten o'clock my carriage arrived, and I immediately quitted 
Galway. As long as the country remained monotonous, I beguiled 
the time by reading. At Gort it becomes more interesting. Not 
far from it flows a river, which, like that at Cong, looses itself several 
times in the earth. One of the deepest basins which it forms is called 
''The Punch-bowl." To fill such a bowl would require a larger tun 
than that at Heidelberg. 

You now begin to approach the Clare mountains : and Nature 
decks herself in more picturesque attire. A park belonging to Lord 
Gort broke upon me like a magnificent picture : it is bounded by a 
broad lake, in which are thirteen beautiful wooded islands; these, 
with the mountains in the back-ground, and the expanse of water, 
which the eye never completely embraces, in front, produced a grand 
and striking effect. One of the most miserable post-horses seemed 
to participate so intensely in my delight, that it was impossible to 
make him stir. After many vain attempts to induce him to change 
his position, during which the postilion repeatedly protested that it 
was only this one spot to which he was so attached, but that if we 
could once get him away from it, he would go like the devil himself, 
we were obliged to unharness him} — he had begun to kick and to 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 367 

break our crazy equipage. In comparison with the Irish post esta- 
blishment, that of Saxony, erst so celebrated, might fairly be called 
excellent. Bleeding skeletons, galled all over, starved and superannu- 
ated, are fastened by rotten harness to your carriage, and if you ask 
your postilion (whose dress consists of a few rags,) if lie thinks that 
such cattle can go a mile, much more a stage of twelve or fifteen, he an- 
swers very seriously, " Sure there's no better equipage in England ; I 
shall take your honour there in less than nothing." Scarcely, however, 
have you gone twenty steps, when something breaks, one horse is res- 
tive, and the other falls down exhausted : this does not put him the 
least out of countenance, he has always some admirable excuse ready, 
and at last, if nothing else will do, he declares himself bewitched. 

This was the course of things to-day. We must probably have 
passed the night in the park of Gort, had not assistance and horses 
been most hospitably despatched to us from the house. Notwith- 
standing this, our stay was so long that it was ten before I reached 
Limerick. My letter is so thick that I must send it away before its 
corpulence becomes ' impayable.' You will not hear of me again in 
less than a fortnight, as I am determined to plunge into those wild 
regions, which foreign foot has seldom trod. Pray for a prosperous 
journey for mej and above all, love me with the same tenderness as 
ever. Your faithful L . 



LETTER XXXIII. 

Limerick, Sept. 22d, 1828. 
Dearest Friend, 

Limerkjk is the third city in Ireland, and of the kind of cities I 
like, old and venerable, adorned with Gothic churches and moss- 
covered ruins j with dark narrow streets, and curious houses of vari- 
ous dates ; a broad river flowing through its whole length, and crossed 
by several antique bridges j lastly, a busy market-place, and 1 cheerful 
environs. Such a city has for me a charm like that of a wood, whose 
dark branches, now low, now high, afford sylvan streets of various 
forms, and frequently over-arch the way like a Gothic roof. Mo- 
dern regular cities are like a trimly cut French garden : they do not 
suit my romantic taste, 

I was not quite well, and returned after a little walk in the town 
to my inn. I found a sexton of one of the Catholic churches waiting 
for me; he told me that they had rung the bells as soon as they knew 
of my arrival, and hoped I would give them ten shillings as a gra- 
tuity. ' Je l'envoyai promener.' In a few minutes a Protestant func- 
tionary of the same sort was announced. I asked him what he want- 
ed. "Only to warn your royal highness against the impositions of 
the Catholics, who annoy strangers in the most shameless manner, 
and to beg that your royal highness will not give them anything: — 
at the same time I take the liberty to ask a small contribution to the 
Protestant poor-house." (You must observe that the people of this 
country are extremely lavish of titles to anybody who travels with 
four horses.) " Go to the d— — 1, Protestants and Catholics," said I 
in a rage, and flung the door in his face. 

But this was not all ; I was soon waited upon by a deputation of 
the catholics, consisting of the French Consul (an Irishman,) a rela- 
tion and namesake of O'Connell, and some others, who harangued 
me, and begged to present me with the Order of the Liberator. I 



368 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

had the greatest possible difficulty in excusing myself from this ho- 
nour, and in declining an invitation to dine with their club. We 
compromised the matter by my accepting the offer of two of them to 
accompany me all over the town as ciceroni. 

I resigned myself very patiently, and was first conducted to the 
cathedral, a building of great antiquity, more in the style of a for- 
tress than of a church ; the architecture solid and rude, but imposing 
by its massiveness. In the interior I admired a carved chair of the 
most exquisite workmanship; it is five hundred years old, and made 
of bog-oak, which time has rendered black as ebony. Its rich orna- 
ments consisted of beautiful arabesques and most curious masks, 
which were different on every side. The grave of Thomond, King 
of Ulster and Limerick, though mutilated and defaced by modern 
additions, is a very interesting monument. Descendants of this 
royal line are still in existence. The head of the family bears the 
title of Marquis of Thomond, a name which you will remember to 
have seen in my letters from London, where its possessor was dis- 
tinguished for the excellence of his dinners. Ireland has many 
families of great antiquity, who pique themselves on never having 
contracted a 'mesalliance,' a practice so common among the Eng- 
lish and French nobility, that pure unmixed blood (stiftsfdhiges 
blut* as we call it in Germany) is no longer to be found in either of 
those kingdoms. The French nobles called these marriages for mo- 
ney 'mettre du fumier sur ses terres,' a joke not very flattering to 
the bride. — And many an English lord owes all the present splendour 
of his family to such ' fumier.' 

We quitted the church, and were proceeding to visit the rock 
near the Shannon, upon which the English signed the treaty after 
the battle of the Boyne; a treaty which they have not been remark- 
ably scrupulous in observing. \ remarked that we were followed 
by an immense crowd of people, which increased like an avalanche, 
and testified equal respect and enthusiasm. All on a sudden they 

shouted " Long life to Napoleon and Marshal ." " Good 

God," said I, "for whom do the people take me? As a perfectly 
unpretending stranger I cannot in the least degree understand why 
they seem disposed to do me so much honour." " Was not your 

father the Prince of ?" said O'Connell. "Oh no," replied 

Ij "my father was indeed a nobleman of rather an older date, but 
very far from being so celebrated." "You must forgive us then," 
said O'Connell incredulously; "for to tell you the truth, you are 
believed to be a natural son of Napoleon, whose partiality to your 
supposed mother was well known." "You joke," said I laughing: 
" I am at least ten years too old to be the son of the great emperor 
and the beautiful princess." He shook his head, however, and I 
reached my inn amid reiterated shouts. Here I shut myself up, and 
shall not quit my retreat to-day. The people, however, patiently 
posted themselves under my windows, and did not disperse till it 
was nearly dark. 

Tralee, Sept. 23rd. 

This morning I was again received with cries of " Long life to 
Napoleon and your honour!" And while my servant, who was 
seated in my carriage, and passed for Napoleon's son, drove off in the 
midst of cheers and acclamations, I slipped out at a back-door, with 

* Eligible to certain chapters and ecclesiastical order?, to which none could be admit- 
ted who could not prove their seventy-two quartcrings. — Transi.. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 369 

a iad who carried my travelling bag, and took my place in the stage, 
which was to convey me to the lake of Killarney. My people had 
orders to wait for me in Cashel, where I shall probably rejoin them 
in a fortnight. 

With my present simple exterior no human being thought of assail- 
ing me with homage; and I could not help philosophizing on this pub- 
lic farce, and thinking how often the desire of glory and renown leads 
only to disguise and false assumption. Certainly of all the dreams of 
life this is the most shadowy! Love sometimes satisfies, knowledge 
tranquilizes, art gladdens and amuses; but ambition, ambition gives 
only the tormenting passion of a hunger which nothing can allay, — 
a chase after a phantom which is ever unattainable. 

In a quarter of an hour I was comfortably established in the stage- 
coach. The passengers inside consisted of three women; one fat and 
jovial, another extremely lean, and a third pretty and well propor- 
tioned. There was also a man who had the air of a pedagogue, with 
a long face, and still longer nose. I sat entrenched between the two 
slender ladies, and conversed with the corpulent one, who was very 
talkative. On my letting down a window she told us that she had 
lately been nearly sea-sick in this very coach, because an ailing lady 
who sat opposite to her would not allow a window to be opened on 
any account. That she, however, did not give it up; and after a quar- 
ter of an hour's persuasion had succeeded in prevailing on the lady 
to admit of one inch of air; a quarter of an hour after another inch, 
and so on, till she manoeuvred the whole window open. " Excellent," 
said I; " that is exactly the way in which women manage to get all 
they wish; first one inch, and then — as much as they want. How dif- 
ferently do men act under similar circumstances," continued I. " An 
English writer, in his directions to travellers, says, that if anybody 
in the mail should insist on keeping all the windows closed, you should 
not enter into any * pour parler' with him, but immediately thrust 
your elbow through the window as if by accident, beg his pardon, and 
quietly enjoy the cool air." The ruins of Adair now attracted our 
attention, and interrupted the conversation. Further on the Shannon 
appeared in all its grandeur. In some parts it is like an American 
river, nine miles broad, and its shores finely wooded. At Lisdowel, 
a little place where we dined, hundreds of beggars assembled as usual 
about the coach. One novelty struck me; they had little wooden cups 
fixed at the end of long sticks, which they reached in at the window, 
and thus more conveniently secured the desired 'pence.' One beggar 
had built himself a sort of sentry-box of loose stones in the road, in 
which he seemed to remain in a state of perpetual bivouac. I must 
conclude; for the mail drives oft* again in a few hours, and I want rest. 
More to-morrow. 

Killarney, Sept. 24th. 

In the course of to-day I saw twelve rainbows, a bad omen for the 
steadiness of the weather ; but I receive it as a good one for me. It 
promises me a many-coloured journey. The company had dropped 
off, one by one, like ripe fruit, and I found myself alone with an Irish 
gentleman, a manafacturer from the north, when I entered the pretty 
cheerful town of Killarney, where the incessant resort of English 
tourists has almost introduced into the inns English elegance and 
English prices. We immediately inquired for boats, and for the 
best way of seeing the lake, but were told that it was imposible to go 
on in such a storm : no boat could 'live on the lake,' as the fisher- 
man expressed it. An English dandy, who had joined us during break- 

47 



370 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

fast, ridiculed these assurances; and as I, you know, am also rather in- 
credulous about impossibilities, we outvoted the manufacturer, who 
showed very little ardour for the undertaking, and embarked, 'malgre 
vent et maree,' near Ross Castle, an old ruin not far from Killarney. 

We had a capital boat, an old characteristic-looking grey-headed 
steersman, and four sturdy rowers. The heaven was as if torn open; 
in some places blue, in others various shades of gray ; but for the 
most part raven-black. Clouds of all forms rolled in wild disorder, 
now and then tinged by a rainbow, or lighted by a pale sun-beam. 
The high mountains scarcely appeared through their gloomy veil, 
and on the lake all was like night. The Black waves heaved in busy 
and ceaseless tumult ; here and there one bore a crest of snow-white 
form. As the motion was nearly as great as at sea, I was slightly 
sea-sick. The manufacturer was pale from fear ; the youngEnglish- 
man, proud of his amphibious nature, laughed at us both. Mean- 
while the storm piped so loud that we could hardly hear each other 
speak ; and when 1 asked the old steersman where we should land 
first, he said, " At the Abbey, if we can land anywhere." This did 
not sound encouraging. Our boat, which was the only one on the 
lake, for even the fishermen would not venture out, danced so fearful- 
ly up and down without making the smallest way, in spite of all the 
efforts of the rowers, that the manufacturer began to think of wife, 
children and manufactory, and peremptorily insisted on returning, as 
he had no intention of sacrificing his life to a party of pleasure. The 
dandy on the other hand was ready to burst with laughter : he pro- 
tested that he was a member of the Yacht Club, and had seen very 
different sort of danger from this; and promised the rowers, who would 
rather have been at home, money without end if they would but hold 
out. For my own part, I followed General Yermoloff's maxim, " nei- 
ther too rash nor too timid," took no part in the contest, wrapped 
myself in my cloak, and awaited the issue in peace. It seems I had 
all the beauty of the scene to myself; one of my companions being 
prevented from seeing it by fear, the other by> self-complacency. For 
some time we struggled with the waves, on which we floated like sea- 
birds in storm and darkness ; till at last such a violent wind came 
upon us from a gorge in the mountains opposite to which we lay, 
that it grew rather too serious even for the ' member of the Yacht 
Club,' and he acceded to the request of the steersman, to row back 
with the wind, and land on an island till the storm abated a little, 
which was generally the case about noon. 

This happened as he predicted : and after encamping for some 
hours in Innisfallen, a lovely little islet with beautiful groups of trees 
and ruins, we were able to continue our voyage. All the islands of 
this little lake, even to the smallest, called the Mouse, which is only a 
few yards long, are thickly clothed with arbutus, and other evergreens. 
They grow wild ; and both in summer and in winter enliven the scene 
with the bright colours of their flowers and fruit. The forms of many 
of these islets are as curious as their names. They are generally 
called after O'Donaghue. Here is O'Donaghue's ' White Horse,' on 
whose rocky hoofs the surf breaks ; there, his • Library ;' further on, 
his ' Pigeon-house,' or his ' Flower-garden ;' and so on. But you do 
not know how the lake of Killarney arose. Listen then. 

O'Donaghue was the powerful chieftain of a clan inhabiting a great 
and opulent city, which stood where the lake now rolls its waters. It 
had everything in abundance except watery and the legend says, that 
the only little spring which it possessed was the gift of a mighty sor- 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 371 

cerer, who called it up at the prayer of a beautiful virgin ; adding a 
solemn warning, that they should never forget to close it every even- 
ing with a large silver cover which he left for that purpose. The 
strange forms and ornaments seemed to confirm this wonderful com- 
mand ; and never was the old custom neglected. 

But O'Donaghue, a mighty and dauntless warrior (perhaps too, 
like Talbot, an incredulous one,) only made merry at this story, as 
he called it ; and one day, being heated with more wine than usual, 
he commanded, to the terror of all present, the silver cover to be 
carried into his house, where, as he jestingly said, it would make 
him an excellent bath. All remonstrances were vain : O'Donaghue 
was accustomed to. make himself obeyed : and as his terrified vassals 
at length dragged in their ponderous burthen, amid groans and 
lamentations, he exclaimed laughing " Never fear, the cool night air 
will do the water good, and in the morning you will all find it fresher 
than ever." But those who stood nearest to the silver cover turned 
away shuddering, for it seemed to them as if the strange intricate 
characters upon it moved, and wreathed like a knot of twisted snakes, 
and an awful sound appeared to come forth mournfully from it. 
Fearful and anxious, they retired to rest : one alone fled to the ad- 
joining mountains. And now when morning broke, and this man 
looked down into the valley, he thought he was in a dream ; — city 
and land had disappeared; the rich meadows were no more to be 
seen, and the little spring bursting forth from the clefts of the earth 
has swelled into a measureless lake. What O'Donaghue prophesied 
was true j the water had become cooler for them all, and the new 
vessel had prepared for him his last bath. 

In very clear bright weather, as the fishermen assured us, some 
have seen at the lowest bottom of the lake, palaces and towers glim- 
mering as through glass : but many have beheld, at the approach of 
a storm, O'Donaghue'sJgiant figure riding over the waves on a snort- 
ing white horse, or gliding along the waters with the quickness of 
lightning in his unearthly bark. 

One of our boat's crew, — a man of about fifty, with long black hair, 
which the wind blew wildly about his temples, of an earnest and quiet 
but imaginative look, — was stealthily pointed out to me by one of his 
companions, while they whispered in my ear that '' he had met him." 
You will believe that I quickly entered into conversation with this 
boatman, and sought to gain his confidence, knowing that these peo- 
ple, whenever they anticipate unbelief and jesting, observe an obstinate 
silence. At first he was reserved ; but at length he became warmed, 
and swore by St. Patrick and the Virgin that what he was going to tell 
me was the naked truth. He said .he had met O'Donaghue at twi- 
light, just before the raging of one of the most terrific storms he had 
ever witnessed. He had staid out late fishing ; it had rained tor- 
rents the whole day ; it was piercingly cold, and without his whiskey- 
bottle he could not have held out any longer. Not a living soul had 
been visible on the lake for a long time, — when all at once a boat, as 
if fallen from the clouds, sailed towards him ; the oars plied like 
lightning, and yet no rowers were visible : but at the stern sat a man 
of gigantic stature : his dress was scarlet and gold, and on his head 
he wore a three-cocked hat with broad gold lace. The spirit-boat 
passed him : Paddy fixed his eyes intently upon it : but when the 
tall figure was over against him, and two large black eyes glared 
forth out of the mantle, and scorched him like living coals, the 
whiskey fell out of his hand, and he did not come to himself till the 



372 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

rough caresses of his other half waked him. She was in a great 
rage, and called him a drunken fellow : — She might think the whis- 
key had brought him to that, but he knew better. 

Is it not curious that the costume here described exactly corres- 
ponds with that of our German Devil of the last century, who is now. 
come into such great favour again ? And yet Paddy had most cer- 
tainly never heard of the Freischiitz. It seems almost as if Hell had 
its ' Journal des Modes.' I was extremely amused at the old man's 
penitence and distress after he had finished his story. He loudly re- 
proached himself for it, crossed himself, and incessantly repeated, 
"O'Donaghue, though terrible, looked like a' real gentkman ;' for," 
said he, looking round fearfully, " 'a perfect gentleman' he was, is 
now, and always will remain." The younger boatmen were not 
such firm believers, and seemed to have a good mind to joke the ghost- 
seer a little, but his seriousness and indignation soon overawed them 
all. One of these young men was a perfect model of a youthful Her- 
cules. With all the overflowing spirits of a body sound to the core, 
he played incessant tricks, and did the work of three at the same time. 

We landed at Mucruss Abbey, which stands in Mr. Herbert's 
park, notwithstanding which it is plentifully furnished with skulls 
and bones. The ruins are of considerable extent, and full of inter- 
esting peculiarities. In the court yard is a yew-tree, perhaps the 
largest in the world ; it not only overtops all the building, but its 
branches darken the whole court, like a tent. In the first story I 
observed a fire-place, on which two ivy branches, one on each side, 
formed a most beautiful and regular decoration, while their leaves 
covered the mantel-piece with a mass of foliage. 

Our guide here gave us a curious example of the unbounded power 
of the Catholic priests over the common people. Two clans, the 
Moynihans and the O'Donaghues had been in a state of perpetual 
feud for half a century. Wherever they met in any considerable 
numbers, a shilielah battle was sure to take place, and many lives 
were usually lost. Since the formation of the Catholic Association, 
it has become the interest of the priests to establish peace and con- 
cord in their flocks. Accordingly, after the fight which took place 
last year, they enjoined as penance that the Moynihans should march 
twelve miles to the north, and the O'Donaghues an equal distance to 
the south, and both pronounce certain prayers at their journey's 
end ; that all the lookers on should make a pilgrimage of six miles 
in some other direction ; and in case of a repetition of the offence, 
the -penance to be doubled. All this was executed with religious 
exactness; and ever since the war is at an end. 

Continuing our progress for about three miles on this side the 
lake, we landed on a thickly wooded shore, and visited O'Sullivan's 
waterfall, which, swollen by the rain, was doubly magnificent. The 
luxuriance of the trees and trailing of the plants which overhang it, 
and the cave opposite, in which you stand protected from the wet to 
view this foaming cataract, increase the picturesque and wild beauty 
of the scene. Here are sweet lonely walks, which lead over the moun- 
tains to a village imbedded in a wood, and cut off from all the world. 

But as the sun was struggling with the clouds, and we were soaked 
through and through (by the heavens and the lake whose waters had 
more than once washed over us,) and very weary, we resolved to close 
our labours for to-day, and to return by Lady Kenmare's pretty villa. 

As we had still about four miles to go by water, the handsome 
young fellow, who by-the-bye. in spite of his athletic frame, had a 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 373 

most remarkable resemblance to Mademoiselle Sontag, offered to bet 
three shillings that he would row us home in half an hour. The old 
' ghost-seer would not undertake such an exertion, but young Sontag 
declared he would row for him. We accepted the wager, and now flew 
like an arrow across the lake. Never did I see a finer exhibition of power 
and persistency, amid constant singing, jokes, and sportive tricks. The 
rowers won their wager only by half a minute, but received from us more 
than double their bet, which all promised with great glee to drink in the 
course of the night. To conclude the whole, they held a conversation, 
already got up for the purpose, with the echo of the walls of Ross Castle. 
The answers had always some double meaning ; for instance, ' Shall we 
have a good bed ?' — answer, ' Bad,' and so on. 

Sept. 25th. 

Unfortunately two Englishmen of my acquaintance arrived to-day, and 
joined us, which destroyed my beloved incognito; for though I am no 
1 exalted personage,' I find as much pleasure in it as if I were. When one 
is unknown, one always escapes some gene, and gains some freedom the 
more, however inconsiderable one may be. As I could not help myself 
in this case, I contrived at least to perform half this day's tour by land 
with my worthy friend the manufacturer, and let the three Englishmen 
go together by boat. It was the same which we had yesterday, and had 
then engaged for to-day. My poney had the high sounding name of ' the 
Knight of the Gap.' He was but a recreant knight, however, and would 
not move without whip and spur. Before we came to the great ravine or 
gap, from which he takes his name, we had a very beautiful view of the 
mountains from a hill which rises in the midst of the plain. Mountain, 
water, and trees, were so happily distributed as to produce the more re- 
freshing harmony : — the long ravine appears all the wilder and more 
monotonous ; in the style of Wales, but not so vast. In one part of it a 
large mass of rock loosened itself some years ago, and lies, split in two, 
across the road. A man had the project of excavating these pieces of 
rock as a hermitage, but remained faithful to his strange dwelling only 
three months. The people, with their usual energy of expression, call it 
"the madman's rock." Some way further on we saw an old woman 
cowering on the road, whose appearance exceeded all that has ever been 
invented in fairy tales. Never did I see anything more frightful and dis- 
gusting : I was told that she was a hundred-and-ten years old ; and had 
survived all her children and grandchildren. Although in an intel- 
lectual point of view reduced to a mere animal, all her senses were in 
tolerable preservation. Her form was neither human nor even animal, 
but resembled rather an exhumed corpse reanimated. As we rode by, 
she uttered a piteous whine, and seemed satisfied when we threw her 
money. She did not reach however to pick it up, but sank back into her 
former torpor and apathy. All the furrows of her livid face were filled 
with black dirt, her eyes looked diseased, her lips were of a leaden blue ; 
in short, imagination could conceive nothing so shocking. 

We met our boat at Brandon Castle, a ruin rendered habitable, with a 
high tower and neglected pleasure-grounds. There are some pieces of 
water through which our guides carried us on their backs. The boat ap- 
peared ' a point nomine ;' it sailed round a projecting point just as we 
reached the shore, and had on board the best bugleman in Killarney. 
He blew a sort of Alpine horn with great skill, and called forth many a 
delightful echo. We passed the arch of a bridge, on which, when the 
waters are swollen, boats are often wrecked. Our bugleman told us that 
he had been twice upset here, and the last time nearly drowned. He 
wished, therefore, to be put on shore, and climb along the rocks past this 



374 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

formidable place ; but the old steersman would not consent, declaring 
that if the strange gentlemen remained in the boat it became him to 
stay, and be drowned with them. We all passed quite safely however. 

The rock called "The Eagle's Nest," which is the almost constant 
abode of those kingly birds, is of a fine and imposing form. Not far from 
it is Coleman's Leap,' — two rocks standing upright in the water at some 
distance ; on which are the marks of feet, three or four feet deep in the 
rock. Such leaps and footmarks are to be found in almost all mountains. 

Our boat was fully victualled for a brilliant dinner (a thing which 
Englishmen seldom forget,) and as we espied a most romantic cottage 
under high chesnut trees, we determined to land here, and eat our re- 
past. It would have been extremely agreeable, had not the dandy spoiled 
it by his affectation, his want of all feeling for the beautiful, and his ill- 
natured 'persiflage' of the less polished but far more estimable Irishman. 
He gave him the nickname of Liston (a celebrated actor, who is particu- 
larly distinguished in silly absurd characters,) and made the poor devil 
unconsciously act so burlesque a part, that I was reluctantly constrained 
to laugh, though the whole thing was quite ' hors de saison,' and in the 
most execrable taste. It is possible, too, that the Irishmart only affected 
stupidity, and was, in fact, the most cunning of the two, — at least he ad- 
dressed himself to eating and drinking with such unwearied perseve- 
rance while the others were occupied with laughing, that very little re- 
mained for them. I cannot deny that he received powerful support in this 
department from me. — A fresh-caught salmon broiled on arbutus-sticks 
over the fire was an admirable specimen of Irish fare. 

We rowed slowly back by moonlight, while the bugleman's horn started echo 
after echo from her repose. It was an enchanting night ; and wandering 
from thought to thought, I reached a state of mind in which I too could have 
seen ghosts. The men near me seemed to me only like puppets ; Nature 
alone, and the sweetness and the majesty that surrounded me, seemed real. 

Whence comes it, thought T, that a heart so loving is not socjal ? that men 
are generally of so little worth to you? — Is your soul too small for intercourse 
with the intellectual world, too nearly allied to plants and animals ? — or have 
you outgrown the forms of this state of existence in some prior one, and feel 
pent up in your too narrow garments? And when the melancholy tones of the 
bugle-horn again trembled in soft notes across the waves, and gave to my 
fancies the sounds of a strange language, like the voice of invisible spirits, I felt 
like Gothe's fisherman,— as if some irresistible force dragged me softly down 
into the calm element, to seek O'Donaghue in his coral rocks. 

Before we landed, a curious ceremony took place. The boat's crew, with 
young Sontag at their head, — who always called me fc his gentleman,' in virtue 
of a somewhat larger fee he had received from me, — asked permission to lie-to 
at a little island, and to christen this after me, which could only be done by 
moonlight. I was therefore told to stand on a projecting rock: lhe six boatmen 
leaning on their oars fowned a circle around me, while the old man solemnly 
pronounced a sort of incantation in a wild measure, which sounded awfully in 
this romantic scenery and the night. Young Sontag then broke off a large 
arbutus branch, and giving a twig of it first to me, and then to the gentlemen 
in the boat, we fixed them in our hats ; the rest he divided among his comrades, 
and then asked me — with respectful earnestness what name the island — with 
O'Donaghue's permission — was in future to bear? " Julia !" said I with a loud 
voice: — on which this name was repeated, not very accurately, three times with 
thundering hurrahs. A third man now took a bottle filled with water, delivered 
a long address in verse to O'Donaghue, and threw the bottle with all his might 
against a piece of rock, so that it broke into a thousand pieces. A second 
bottle filled with whiskey was then drunk to my health, and a threefold cheer 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 375 

again given to Julia Island. The boatmen, to whom the name was strange, 
took it for mine, and henceforth called me nothing but Mr. Julia, which I heard 
witli a melancholy satisfaction. 

Your domains are thus increased by an island on the romantic lake of Kil- 
larney: it is only a pity that the next company that lands on the same spot will 
probably rob you of it ; for doubtless such christenings take place as often as 
godfathers are to be found. The real child, the whiskey-bottle, is always at 
hand. Nevertheless, 1 enclose an arbutus leaf from the identical sprig which 
flourishedon my hat, that you may at least retain undisputed possession of some- 
thing from your island. 

Glengariff, Sept. 26t7i. 
To write to you to-day is really an effort which deserves reward; for I am 
excessively tired, and have, like my father Napoleon, been obliged to drink 
coffee incessantly to keep me awake.* 

I left Killarney at nine o'clock in the morning in a car of the most wretched 
construction, and followed the new road which leads along the upper and lower 
lake to the Bay of Kenmare. This road discloses more beauties than are seen 
from the lakes themselves, which have the great disadvantage of affording a 
picturesque view on one side only, — -the other shore is quite flat. On the road 
which lies along the side of the mountain and through a wood, every turn pre- 
sents you with pictures, which are the more beautiful from being framed. I 
remark, generally, that views seen from the water lose: they want the principal 
thing — the foreground. 

Near a beautiful cascade, and in the most charming wilderness, though not 
far from the road, a merchant has built himself a villa, and surrounded it with 
a garden and park. He must have expended at least five or six thousand 
pounds, — perhaps much more, — and yet the land is the property of his family 
only for ninety-nine years ; at the expiration of that time it falls, together with 
all that is upon it, to the lord of the soil, Lord Kenmare, and must be delivered 
up to him in perfect repair. No German would feel disposed to spend his 
money in decorative improvements on such terms : but in England, — where 
almost the whole soil belongs either to the government, the church, or the 
powerful aristocracy, and therefore can seldom be purchased in fee ; where, 
on the other hand, industry, fostered by a wise government, in alliance with 
agriculture, has enriched the middling and trading classes, — such contracts are 
extremely common, and obviate many of the inconveniences of the distribution 
of landed property, without diminishing its great utility to the state. 

The ascent now became steeper and steeper, and we soon found ourselves 
in the midst of bare heights ; for vegetation here seldom extends above midway 
up the mountains. It is not as in Switzerland, where luxuriant verdure reaches 
almost to the snowy region. To take Switzerland as a standard by which to 
try Ireland, would however be absurd. Both countries afford romantic beauties 
of a totally different character; both excite admiration and astonishment at 
the sublime works of Nature, though in Switzerland they are on a more colossal 
scale. The road was so winding, that after half an hour's climbing we found our- 
selves precisely over the cottage I mentioned, which with its shining gray thatch 
looked, at that depth, like a little mouse sunning itself in the green grass; — for the 
sun, after a long struggle, had at length become undisputed lord of the heavens. 
Eight miles from Killarney we reached the highest point of the road, where 
stands a solitary inn. You look down upon the broad valley, in whose lap lies 
the greater part of the three lakes, so that you behold them all with one glance. 
From this point the road descends, leading between naked mountains of bold 
forms to the sea. It was fair-time when I arrived in Kenmare, and I could 

* The maitre d'hotel who lately published Memoirs of Napoleon, vindicates the Emperor 
from this reproach with indignation. His memoirs are certainly most flattering to that great 
man, for they prove 'qu'il est reste heros meme pour son valet de chambre.' — Edit. * 



376 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

hardly penetrate through the bustling crowd with my one-horse vehicle, espe- 
cially from the number of drunken men who would not — perhaps could not — 
get out of the way. One of them fell in consequence of an attempt to do so, 
and knocked his .head so violently on the pavement that he was carried away 
senseless, — a thing of such common occurrence that it attracted no attention. 
The skulls of Irishmen appear to be universally of a more firm and massive con- 
struction than those of other people, probably because they are trained to re- 
ceive shillelah blows. While I dined, I had another opportunity of observing 
several affrays. First a knot of people collect, shouting and screaming ; this 
rapidly thickens ; and all at once, in the twinkling ofan eye, a hundred shillelahs 
whirl in the air, and the thumps, — which are generally applied to the head, — 
bang and snap like the distant report of fire-arms, till one party has gained the 
victory. As I was now at the fountain-head, through the "mediation of mine 
host 1 bought one of the finest specimens of this weapon, yet warm from the 
fight. It is as hard as iron, and that it may be sure to do execution, it is also 
weighted at the end with lead. 

The celebrated O'Connell is now residing at about thirty miles from hence, 
in his solitary fortress in the most desert region of Ireland. As I have long 
wished to know him, I sent a messenger from this place, and determined, while 
waiting for his answer, to make an excursion to GlengariiTBay, whither I ac- 
cordingly set out as soon as I had dined. 

Driving is now completely at an end: I can proceed only on a poney or on 
foot- I set out, a poney carrying my baggage, and I and my guide walking 
by his side. If either of us were tired, the good little horse was to carry us 
too. The sun soon set, but the moon shone bright. The road was not unin- 
teresting, though horribly bad, often leading through bog and brook without 
bridge or stepping-stone. It became indescribably difficult after six or eight 
miles, where we had to climb a high and nearly perpendicular hill, treading 
only on loose and pointed stones, from which we slipped back at every step 
nearly as far as we went forward. The descent on the other side was still worse, 
especially when a mountain intercepted the moon's light. I was so weary that 
I could walk no further, and seated myself on the poney. This little creature 
showed almost human intelligence. Going up-hill he helped himself with his 
nose, and I think even with his teeth, as a fifth leg ; and down-hill, he wriggled 
with incessant twisting of his body like a spider. When he came to a boggy 
place, in which there was only here and there a stone, thrown by way of step, 
he crept as slowly as a sloth, always trying first with his foot whether the stone 
would bear him and his burthen. The whole scene was most singular. The 
night was so clear, that I could see around me to a great distance ; but nothing 
met my eye save rocks ranged above rocks, of every shape and kind, standing 
out gigantic, wild and sharp, against the sky. No living creature, not a tree 
or bush, was to be seen, only our own shadows trailed after us ; not a sound 
was heard but our own voices, and sometimes the distant rush of a mountain- 
stream, or more rarely the melancholy horn of a herdsman collecting his cattle 
wandering amid these pathless wilds. Once only we saw one of these cows, 
which, like the mountain-sheep of Wales, have caught the shyness of wild 
animals. She was lying in the road, but on our approach sprang bellowing 
over the rocks, and vanished in the darkness like a black spirit. 

About an hour before you reach GlengarifT Bay the landscape becomes as 
luxuriant and park-like as it has heretofore been dreary and barren. Here the 
rocks arise in the strangest forms, out of Hesperian thickets of arbutus, Portu- 
gal laurel, and other lovely and fragrant shrubs. Many of these rocks stand 
like palaces, smooth as marble, without excrescence or inequality ; others form 
pointed pyramids, or long continuous walls. In the valley sparkled solitary 
lights, and a gentle breeze waved the tops of the high oaks, ashes, and birches, 
intermingled with beautiful holly, whose scarlet berries were visible even by 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 377 

moonlight. The magnificent buy now glittered under the web of moonbeams 
which lay upon it; and 1 really thought myself in Paradise when I reached its 
shore, and alighted at the door of a pretty cheerful inn. Cheerful as was its 
exterior, mourning was within its gates. The host and hostess, very respectable 
people, came out to receive me, dressed in deep mourning. On my inquiring 
the cause, they told me that her sister, the most beautiful girl in Kerry, eighteen 
years of age and the picture of health, died the day before of a brain-fever, or 
rather, of the ignorance of the village doctor: — the poor woman added, weep- 
ing, that a week's illness had changed her to forty, so that nobody could re- 
cognize the corpse of the once blooming girl, or those sweet features which 
were so lately the pride of her parents and the admiration of all the young men 
in the neighbourhood. 

She lies close by my bed-room, dear Julia ! parted from me only by a iew 
boards. — Four feet from her stands the table at which I am writing to you. 
Such is the world ; — life and death, joy and grief, are never far apart. 

Kenmare, Sept. 27th. 

At six o'clock I was stirring, and at seven in the magnificent park of Colo- 
nel W , brother of Lord B , whose family possesses all the country 

around the bays of Bantry and Glengariff, perhaps the most beautiful part of 
Ireland. The extent of this estate is princely, although in a pecuniary point 
of view not so considerable, the greater part of the land, consisting of un- 
cultivated rocks and mountains, which pay only the rent of romantic beauties 
and magnificent views. Mr. W 's park is certainly one of the most per- 
fect creations of that kind, and owes its existence entirely to his perseverance 
and good taste. It is true, that he could nowhere have found a spot of earth 
more grateful for his labours ; but it seldom happens that art and nature so 
cordially unite. It is enough to say that the former is perceptible only in the 
most perfect harmony ; otherwise, it appears to vanish into pure nature : — not 
a tree or a bush seems planted by design. The vast resources of distant pros- 
pect are wisely husbanded ; they come upon the eye by degrees, and as if 
unavoidably : every path is cut in a direction which seems the only one it could 
take without constraint and artifice: the most enchanting effects of woods and 
plantations are produced by skilful management, by contrast of masses, by 
felling some, thinning others, clearing off or keeping down branches; so that 
the eye is attracted now into the depths of the wood, now above, now below 
the boughs; and every possible variety within the region of the beautiful is 
produced. This beauty is never displayed naked, but always sufficiently 
veiled to leave the requisite play for the imagination: for a perfect park, — in 
other words, a tract of country idealized by art, — should be like a good book, 
which suggests at least as many new thoughts and feelings as it expresses. 

The dwelling-house is not visible till you reach an opposite height; it then 
suddenly emerges from the mass of wood, its outline broken by scattered 
trees in groups, and its walls garlanded with ivy and roses and creeping plants. 
It was built after the plan of the possessor; in a style not so much Gothic as 
antiquely picturesque, such as a delicate feeling of the suitable and harmo- 
nious conceived to be in keeping with the surrounding scenery. The execu- 
tion is excellent; for the imitation of the antique is quite deceptive. The 
ornaments are so sparingly and so suitably interspersed, the whole so well 
constructed for habitation and comfort, and the part which appears the oldest 
has such a neglected and uninhabited air, that the impression it made, on me at 
least, completely answered the intention of the architect; for I took it to be an 
old abbey, lately rendered habitable, and modernized just so far as our habits 
rendered necessary. At the back of the house are hothouses and a walled 
garden in beautiful order, both connected with the sitting-rooms, — so that you 

48 



378 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

live in the midst of flowers, tropical plants and fruits, without leaving the 
house. The climate is the most favourable possible for vegetation, — moist, 
and so warm that not only azaleas, rhododendrons, and all sorts of evergreens 
stand abroad through the winter, but even, in a favourable aspect, camellias. 
Dates, pomegranates, magnolias, lyriodendrons, &c. attain their fullest beauty; 
and the three last are not even covered. The situation aflbrds extensive 
views, remarkable variety, and yet a complete whole, enclosed within high 
mountains. Bantry and Glenganff bays are seas in miniature, and supply to 
the eye the want of the ocean. On the land side the wavy lines of mountain 
seem nearly endless. 

The lesser bay of Glengariff, which stretches in front of the house, is nine 
miles, the other fifty miles in circumference. Among the mountains imme- 
diately opposite to the park rises another sugar-loaf, and at its foot a narrow 
line of hills stretches into the midst of the bay, where its termination is pic- 
turesquely marked by a deserted fort. The park itself lies along one entire 
side of the bay, and at its lesser end borders on that of Bantry, where Lord 
B 's house forms the principal object from this side. This whole beauti- 
ful domain was called out of nothing only forty years ago, and is yet only 
half finished. Such a work deserves a crown: and the excellent man who 
with slender means, but with singular talent and perseverance, has accom- 
plished it, ought to be held up as a model to those Irish proprietors who 
spend their money abroad. I heard with real satisfaction, that on his and 

Lord B 's estates party hate is unknown. Both are Protestants, — all 

their ' tenants' are Catholics; nevertheless they render an obedience as bound- 
less as it is voluntary and cordial. Colonel W , indeed, lives like a patri- 
arch among them, as I learnt from the common people themselves, and settles 
all their differences, so that not a penny is spent in the wire-drawings of the law. 

You may be sure that I was eager to make the acquaintance of so admirable 
a man: I esteemed myself, therefore, highly favoured by fortune in meeting 
him in the park inspecting the operations .of his workmen. Our conversation 
took a very interesting and, to me, very instructive turn. I readily accepted 
his invitation to breakfast with him and his family; and found in his wife a 
lady with whom I had made a transient acquaintance in the whirl of London. 
She received so unexpected a guest most cordially, and introduced me to her 
two daughters of seventeen and eighteen. They are not yet out; for as I have 
told you, in England, where they bring out horses ' sans comparaison' too 
early, the poor girls are let to grow almost old before their leading-strings 
are taken oft" and they are launched into the wicked world. 

The family show me all possible civility and kindness; and as the ladies saw 
me so passionate a lover of nature, they urged me to stay some days, that I 
might visit the various wonders of their neighbourhood, especially the cele- 
brated waterfall, and view from Hungry Hill, in their company. Jt was im- 
possible for me to stay, as I had already announced myself at O'Connell's; but 
shall certainly avail myself of their invitation on my way to Cork, for such 
society is not of the kind that I shun. 

I therefore contented myself for the present with taking a long walk with 
the whole family, first along the bay, to obtain a general view of the park and 

garden; then into a wood, in which Lord B has a 'shooting lodge.' 

This spot is as if invented for a romance. All that the most secluded solitude, 
the richest vegetation, the freshest and greenest meadows, surrounded by 
rocks and mountains; valleys on whose sides precipitous walls of rock, some- 
times a thousand feet high, thickly-wooded glens, a rapid torrent dashing over 
masses of rock and over-arched by picturesque bridges of trunks and arms of 
trees; groves amid which the sunbeams play, and the cool waters refresh a 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 379 

thousand wild flowers; animals sporting about in joyous security, majestic 
eagles and gay-plumed singing birds, all rendered doubly dear to the poetic 
heart by the sweetest repose and retirement; — all that such elements can 
produce is here found combined in the richest profusion. With melancholy 
regret I quitted these enchanting fancies of our dear mother earth, and tore 
myself away, when we reached the rustic gate, at which my guide and poney 
were already waiting for me. 

As I took leave of my new friends, and turned my back on the lovely val- 
ley, the heavens were overclouded anew, and on my entrance into the dreary 
rocky region which I described to you yesterday, assumed the hue most suited 
to my disposition and to the surrounding objects. Tired of my long ride of 
yesterday, I wished to walk ; but on my inquiring for my over-shoes, which 
the wetness of the road rendered needful, I found that the guide had lost one 
of them; and as fine scenery is better enjoyed dry-footed, I sent him back, ho- 
ping to restore to my sorrowful galoche its faithful mate, at least for the mor- 
row: for to-day I resolved to continue my way through thick and thin on foot. 

A soft rain began to fall, — one mountain after another was veiled from 
sight; and I wandered on, to the region where only the vast bones of the earth 
are visible, casting back many a melancholy lingering thought to the lost para- 
dise. Meanwhile the rain became more and more heavy, and sudden gusts 
of wind soon announced a serious storm. I had to climb the high, mountain 
which lies in the middle of the first half of the way, and already I was met by 
torrents of water which gushed like little cascades through every cleft. As I 
am seldom in the way of enjoying such a bath in the open air, I waded with a 
great feeling of satisfaction and pleasure through the streams, throwing my- 
self in some degree into the pleasurable state of mind of a duck. Nothing of 
that kind is, as you know, impossible to my mobile fancy. But as the wea- 
ther became every minute more dark and stormy, my thoughts also became 
more gloomy, and indeed fell almost into the fashionable scornful salanic vein. 
The superstition of the mountains surrounded me; I could not withstand it, 
and Riibezahl, the Bohemian Huntsman, elfs, fairies, and the Evil One him- 
self, all passed before my mind ; and I asked myself, " why should not the 
Devil appear to me, as well as to other respectable gentlemen ?'' At this in- 
stant I reached the highest point of the steep mountain. 

The storm howled furiously, water fell in sheets from the heavens, and the 
deep basin below me appeared now and then for a minute from behind its black 
curtain, and then vanished again in the rolling mist and the gathering twilight. 

A sudden gust of wind now completely inverted my umbrella, and nearly 
threw me down. I felt as if some giant fist had struck me. I turned and saw 
— nothing : — But how ? does not something move there in the corner ? — by 
heaven it does ! My amazement was not slight when I now discerned, as 
clearly as darkness and rain would permit, a figure clad in black from head to 
foot, with a scarlet cap on its head advancing at a slow and limping pace to- 
wards me. 

Now, dear Julia, ' est-ce moi ou le diable qui ecrira le reste ?' or do you 
think I am inventing a fable to amuse you. ' Point du tonV—Ditchung und 
Wahrheit* is my motto. At all events I must close my letter here : I venture 
to hope my next will be expected with some impatience. Wholly yours, 

L 

* Poetry and Truth, — the title of Gothe's auto-biographical work. 



380 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



LETTER XXXIV. 

Kenmare, Sept. 28//*, 1828. 

Beloved Friend. — Was it the devil or not then ? you ask. ' Ma foi, je 
n'en sais rien.' At any rate he had assumed a very ' recommendable,' though 
rather dangerous form, — that of a pretty girl, who, wrapped in her long dark 
blue cloak, made darker by the rain, and with the red cap of Kerry on her 
head, barefoot and shivering with cold, was going to pass by me, when I asked 
her what made her limp ? and why she was wandering alone in such weather? 
" Ah !" said she, in half-intelligible patois, and pointing to her foot bound up, 
" I was only going to the next village, and I am belated, and. I fell into the 
terrible weather, and I have hurt myself very much ;" and then She looked 
down with an arch bashfulness, and showed the pretty wounded ancle. We 
walked on together rnd shared the difficulties of the way, — helped one another 
where we could, and at length found in the valley, first, better weather ; then 
a place of shelter; and at last, a refreshing draught of new milk. 

Thus invigorated I wandered on by night ; and when I reached Kenmare, I 
had walked four German miles in something more than six hours : I was, how- 
ever, heartily tired, and as soon as I reached my bed-room I exclaimed with 
Wallenstein, 

"Icji denke einen langen Schlaf zu thun !"* 

Derrinane Abbey, Sept. 29th. 

This accordingly happened ; and I had plenty of time, for the weather was 
so horribly bad that I waited in vain, alas ! till three in the afternoon for better. 
I had sent a messenger to O'Connell the evening before, and had very incon- 
siderately paid him beforehand. I found him at. the inn, without an answer 
and with broken shins. As soon as. he had felt the money in his pocket he 
had been unable to resist the whiskey, and in consequence he and his horse 
had fallen down a rock in the night. He had, however, had the extraordi- 
nary sense and thought to send on a friend of his to fulfil his mission ; and at 
my waking I found a very polite invitation from the Great Agitator. 

I have already said that I did not set out till three o'clock ; and although I 
had to ride seven hours with a most violent rain beating' in my face, and in 
this desert where not even the shelter of a single tree is to be found, I had not 
a dry thread upon me after the first half hour. I would on no account have 
missed this extraordinary part of my adventures. 

The beginning was certainly difficult. At first I could not get a horse, for 
that which I had ridden at Glengariff had hurt his foot. At length appeared 
an old black cart-horse, which was destined for my use, and a sort of cat-like 
little animal intended for my guide. I was also in imbroglio with regard to 
my toilet. The lost galoche had not been found, and the umbrella was already 
unreeled on the iiaunted mountain. I replaced the first by a large slipper of 
my host's ; the second I tied together as well as I could, and then holding it 
before me like a shield, with a pocket-hankerchief covered with a piece of oil- 
cloth over my head, I galloped off in searclrof fresh adventures, — a perfect 
Don Quixote, and attended by a no less faithful representative of Sancho Panza. 

Before 1 got a quarter of a mile from the town a destructive gust of wind 
made a deplorable end of my umbrella, once the ornament of New Bond 
Street, and since the companion of so many a disaster. All its cords broke, 
and left only a torn piece of silk and a bundle of- whalebone in my grasp: 1 
gave the remains to my guide, and surrendered myself without further solici- 

* " I purpose to take ii long sleep." 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 381 

tude or defence to the elements, determined to bear good-humouredly what 
could not be altered. 

As long as we coasted the bay of Kenmare, we rode on as quickly as pos- 
sible, tiie road being tolerable. Soon, however, it assumed a worse aspect. 
The entrance to the wilder mountain country is marked by a picturesque 
bridge, thrown across a chasm an hundred feet high, called " The Bridge of 
the Black Water." The sides of the chasm were clothed with oaks, — the 
last trees which I beheld. I remarked that my valise, which my guide 
had fastened on his horse, must inevitably be soaked through, and ordered the 
man to endeavour, if possible, to get a mat or sack at the nearest cabin, to lay 
over it. This incautious act I had abundant cause to rue : he too was, appa- 
rently, detained by the fascinations of whiskey; at any rate, though I frequently 
stopped in the hope that he would overtake me, 1 did not see him again till just 
at the end of my journey, which afterwards caused me the greatest perplexity. 

The road, which gradually grew worse and worse, lay l'or the most part 
close to the sea. which the storm threw into magnificent agitation; — sometimes 
across a dreary flat of bog, sometimes by the side of chasms and steep preci- 
pices, or through wide chaotic plains, in which masses of rock were thrown 
together in such wild confusion, that it seemed the spot from which the giants 
had stormed heaven. 

At rare intervals I met a solitary ragged wanderer; and the thought often 
recurred to me, how easy it were in this desert region to rob or murder me 
without the slightest risk of discovery. My whole travelling property resides 
in my breast pocket; for in the Grecian fashion I carry 'omnia mea' with me. 
But far removed from all predatory thoughts, these poor good-hearted people 
invariably greeted me with respectful kindness, although my exterior was any- 
thing but imposing, and to an English eye by no means bespoke a ' gentleman.' 
I was frequently in utter uncertainty which of the half-imperceptible roads I 
ought to take, but unfortunately determined to keep as near to the sea as possi- 
ble, which, though not the nearer, was the surest. Meanwhile time passed 
on; and when, at long intervals, I met a human being, and asked "How far 
is it to Mr. O'Connell's ?" the object of my visit always drew down a blessing 
upon me. I was answered with a "God bless your honour!" but the miles 
seemed rather to increase than to diminisli. 

At length it began to grow dark just as I reached a part of the coast, which 
assuredly it would be difficult to parallel. Foreign travellers have probably 
never been thrown into this desolate corner of the earth, which belongs rather 
to owls and sea-mews than to men, and of whose awful wildness it is difficult 
to give an idea. — Torn, jagged, coal-black rocks, with deep caverns, into 
which the sea breaks with ceaseless thunder, and then again dashes over the 
top of the tower-like crags its white foam; which, drying, is borne by the wind 
in compact masses, like locks of wool, over the highest points of the mountains; 
— the wailing cry of the restless fluttering sea-fowl, piercing through the storm 
with its shrill monotonous sound; — the incessant howl and roar of the under- 
mining waves, which sometimes suddenly dashed over my horse's hoofs, and 
then ran hissing back again; — the comfortless removal from all human help; 
— the ceaseless pattering rain, and the coming-on of night on an uncertain 
and entirely unknown road. 

I began really to feel uneasy, in earnest, — not half in jest as the day before. 
Your eager search for the romantic will turn out as ill for you, as for the Sor- 
rowful Knight, thought I, and urged on my tired horse to his utmost speed. 
He stumbled every moment over the loose stones, and with great difficulty I 
at length brought him into a heavy trot. My anxiety was increased by O'Con- 
nell's letter. He had written to me that the proper approach to his house was 
from Killarney, — that carriages must cross thence by water; but that the road 



382 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

from Kenmare was the most difficult, and that I must therefore be sure to pro- 
vide myself with a safe guide. And, as is generally the case when we pursue 
one train of thoughts with great pertinacity, a popular tale of Croker's, which 
I had lately read came into my mind. " No land," says he, " is better than 
the coast of Inveragh to be drowned in the sea; or if you like that better, to 
break your neck on shore." Yet thought 1 — and here my horse suddenly slum- 
bled, shyed, and turned with such a leap as I had hardly given the old mare cre- 
dit for. I now found myself in a narrow pass. It was still light enough to see 
several steps before me clearly, and 1 could not understand what had struck this 
panic into my horse. Making all the resistance he could, and only in obedience 
to the admonitions of my shillelah, he at length went on again; but in a few steps 
I perceived with astonishment that the path, which had appeared pretty well 
tracked, terminated directly in the sea. The bridle nearly dropped out of 
my hand, as a foaming wave chased'by the storm sprang upon me like a huge 
monster, and scattered the narrow cleft far behind me with its spray. Here 
was really a difficult situation. Bare inaccessible rocks surrounded me on every 
side, — before me rolled the ocean,' — there was nothing for me but to retreat. 
But if I had lost my way, as I could not but suspect, how could I reckon on 
meeting my guide, even by returning ; and if I did not meet him, where was I 
to pass the night ? With the exception of O'Connell's old castle, there was no 
hope of meeting with the least trace of a shelter for twenty miles round. I 
was already shivering with cold and wet, and my constitution would certainly 
not carry me through a bivouac in such a night. I had doubtless cause for* 
some alarm. It was useless, however, to consider : I must ride back, that was 
clear ; and as quickly as possible. My horse seemed to have come to the same 
conclusion ; for, as if inspired with new force, he bore me away from the spot 
at a gallop. But would you believe it : a black figure was again destined to 
help me in my difficulty. You will say this is too much. ' Ce n'est pas ma 
faute ; le vrai souvent n'est pas le vrai-semblable.' In short, I saw a black fig- 
ure glide like a dim phantom across my path, and disappear behind the rocks. 
Invocations, prayers, promises, were in vain : — Was it a smuggler allured to 
this coast by the ample facilities it offers 1 or a superstitious peasant who took 
my unhappy person for a ghost ? ^.t all events it appeared that he did not 
choose to venture from his hiding-place, and I began to despair of the help I had 
thought at hand ; when suddenly his head peeped out close to me from the 
cleft of a rock. I soon succeeded in tranquillizing his fears, and he explained 
to me the puzzle of the road terminating in the sea. " This road was made 
for low water ; the tide is now," he said, "about half in ; a quarter of an hour 
later it is imposible to pass ; but now, if you'll pay me well, I will try and 
bring you through, — but we must not loose a moment." With these words he 
seated himself at one bound on the horse behind me, and we made what speed 
we could back to the sea, which was rolling with great rapidity. 

I felt a strange sensation as we now appeared deliberately to plunge down 
into the stormy sea, and had to make our difficult way amid the white waves 
and the rocks, which looked like ghosts in the dim twilight. 

We had the greatest trouble too with the horse : however, the black man 
knew the ground so perfectly that we reached the opposite coast in safety, 
though bathed up to the arms in salt-water. 

Unluckily, the terrified beast shyed again here at a projecting rock, and 
broke both the rotten girths directly in the middle, a mischance for which 
there was no remedy here. After all my disasters, I had the agreeable pros- 
pect of riding the last six miles balancing on the loose saddle. My black 
guide had indeed given me the clearest directions for the prosecution of my 
journey ; but it was now so dark that the landmarks were no longer visible. 

The road lay, as it appeared to me, across a wide moor, and was at first quite 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 383 

level. After half an hour of rough and stumbling trotting, during which I press- 
ed my knees as hard as possible together, that I might not lose my saddle, I re- 
marked that the road turned again to the right into the higher range of mountains j 
for the climbing grew steeper and more continual. Here I found a woman, 
who was passing the night with her pigs or goats. The road branched off' into 
two divisions, and I asked her which I must take to roach Derrinane Abbey ? 
" Oh ! both lead there," said she ; " but that on the left is two miles nearer." 
Of course I took this, but soon found to my cost that it was practicable only 
for goats. I execrated the old witch, and her traitorous intelligence : — my 
poor horse exhausted himself in vain efforts to climb through the blocks of 
stone, and at length, half stumbling half falling, lie threw both saddle and me. 
It was impossible to keep the saddle on him alone ; it fell down incessantly, and 
I was obliged to load my own shoulders with it, and to lead my horse besides. 
Till now I had kept in pretty good temper ; — tiie spirit was still willing, but the 
flesh began to be weak : — the man on the cliff' had said, only six miles further, 
and you are there ; and now, after half an hour's hard riding, the woman in- 
sisted upon it that it was still six miles, the shortest way, to Derrinane. I 
began to fear that this mountain fortress was not to be found, and that I was 
the sport of Kobolds, who bandied me from one to another. I seated myself 
on a stone quite out of heart, fevered with alternate heat and cold ; when, like 
the voice of an angel in the wilderness, the shouts of my guide resounded in 
my ear, and I soon heard the trampling of his horse's hoofs. He had taken 
quite a different way though the interior of the mountains, to avoid the sea, 
and had luckily met the woman whose direction I had followed. 

In the delicious feeling of present security, I forgot all my disasters, loaded 
my deliverer with the saddle and my wet cloak, gave up my horse to his 
guidance, and seated myself upon his, thus making what speed I might. We 
had, in fact, five miles yet to ride, and Lhat through a mountain-pass surround- 
ed by precipices, — but I can give you no further description of the road. The 
darkness was so complete, that I was obliged to strain my eyes to the utmost 
to follow the man, who appeared only like a dim shadow flitting indistinctly 
before me. I perceived by the stumbling of my horse that we were on uneven 
ground ; I felt that it was a continual alternation of steep ascents and descents ; 
that we waded through two deep and rapid mountain torrent?, — but that was 
all: — now and then, indeed, I suspected, rather than saw, that a bare wall of 
rock rose by my side, or the deeper black beneath me betrayed the precipice 
which yawned below. 

At length, — at length a bright light broke through the darkness ; the road 
grew more even ; here and there a bit of hedge was visible ; and in a few 
minutes we stopped at the gate of an ancient building standing on the rocky 
shore, from the windows of which a friendly golden radiance streamed through 
the night. 

The tower clock was striking eleven, and I was, I confess, somewhat 
anxious as to my dinner, especially as I saw no living being, except a man in 
a dressing-gown at an upper window. Soon, however, I heard sounds in the 
house ; a handsomely-dressed servant appeared, bearing silver candlesticks, 
and opened the door of a room, in which I saw with astonishment a company 
of from fifteen to twenty persons sitting at a long table, on which were placed 
wine and desserts. A tall handsome man, of cheerful and agreeable aspect, 
rose to receive me, apologized for having given me up in consequence of the 
lateness of the hour, regretted that I had made such a journey in such terrible 
weather, presented me in a cursory manner to his family, who formed the ma- 
jority of the company, and then conducted me to my bedroom. — This was the 
great O'Connell. 



384 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

On my return to the dining-room I found the greater part of the company 
there assembled. I was most hospitably entertained; and it would be un- 
grateful not to make honourable mention of Mr. O'Connell's old and capital 
wine. As soon as the ladies had quitted us, he drew his seat near me, and 
Ireland was of course the subject of our conversation. Fie asked me if I had 
yet seen many of the curiosities of Ireland? whether I had been at the Giant's 
Causeway? — "No," replied I, laughing, "before I visit the Giant's Cause- 
way, I wished to see Ireland's Giants;" — and therewith drank a glass of 
claret to his high undertakings. 

Daniel O'Connell is indeed no common man, — though the man of the com- 
monalty. His power is so great, that at this moment it only depends on him 
to raise the standard of rebellion from one end of the island to the other. He 
is, however, too sharp-sighted, and much too sure of attaining his end by safer' 
means, to wish to bring on any such violent crisis. He has certainly shown 
great dexterity in availing himself of the temper of the country at this moment, 
legally, openly, and in the face of the government, to acquire a power scarcely 
inferior to that of the sovereign; indeed, though without arms or armies, in 
some instances far surpassing it: — for how would it have been possible for His 
Majesty George IV. to withhold 40,000 of his faithful Irishmen for three days 
from whiskey-drinking; which O'Connell actually accomplished in the memo- 
rable Clare election. The enthusiasm of the people rose to such a height, 
that they themselves decreed and inflicted a punishment for drunkenness. 
The delinquent was thrown into a certain part of the river, and held there for 
two hours, during which time he was made to undergo frequent submersions. 

The next day I had fuller opportunity of observing O'Connell. On the 
whole, he exceeded my expectations. His exterior is attractive; and the 
expression of intelligent good-nature, united with determination and prudence, 
which marks his countenance, is extremely winning. He has, perhaps, more 
of persuasiveness than of genuine large and lofty eloquence; and one fre- 
quently perceives too much design and manner in his words. Nevertheless, 
it is impossible not to follow his powerful arguments with interest, to view 
the martial dignity of his carriage withqut pleasure, or to refrain from laughing 
at his wit. It is very certain that he looks much more like a general of 
Napoleon's than a Dublin advocate. This resemblance is rendered much 
more striking by the perfection with which he speaks French, — having been 
educated at the Jesuits' Colleges at Douai and St. Orner. His family is 
old, and was probably one of the great families of the land. His friends, 
indeed, maintain that he springs from the ancients kings of Kerry, — an opinion 
which no doubt adds to the reverence with which he is regarded by the people. 
He himself told me, — and not without a certain pretension, — that one of his 
cousins was Comte O'Connell, and ' cordon rouge' in France, and another a 
baron, general and chamberlain to the Emperor of Austria; but that he was 
the head of the family. It appeared to me that he was regarded by the other 
members of it with almost religious enthusiasm. He is about fifty years old, 
and in excellent preservation, though his youth was rather wild and riotous. 

Among other things he became notorious, about ten years ago, for a duel 
he fought. The Protestants, to whom his talents ^rly made him formidable, 
set on a certain Desterre, — a bully and fighter by profession, — to ride through 
all the streets of Dublin with a hunting-whip, which, as he declared, he 
intended to lay on the shoulders of the king of Kerry. The natural conse- 
quence was a meeting the next morning, in which O'Connell lodged a bullet 
in Desterre's heart; Desterre's shot went through his hat. This was his first 
victory over the Orangemen, which has been followed by so many more 
important, and, it is to be hoped, will be followed by others more impor- 
tant still. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 3S5 

His desire for celebrity seemed to be boundless; and if he should suc- 
ceed in obtaining emancipation, of which I have no doubt, his career, so 
far from being closed, will I think only then properly begin. But the 
evils of Ireland, and of the constitution of Great Britain generally, lie 
too deep to be removed by emancipation. — To return to O'Connell; I 
must mention, that he has received from nature an invaluable gift for a 
party-leader; a magnificent voice, united to good lungs and a strong con- 
stitution. His understanding is sharp and quick, and his acquirements 
out of his profession not inconsiderable. With all this, his manners are, 
as I have said, winning and popular; although somewhat of the actor is per- 
ceivable in them, they do not conceal his very high opinion of himself, 
and are occasionally tinged by what an Englishman would call " vulga- 
rity. " Where is there a picture entirely without shade! 

Another interesting man, the real though not ostensible head of the Ca- 
tholics, was present, Father L'Estrange, a friar, and O'Connell's confes- 
sor. He may be regarded as the real founder of that Catholic Association 
so often derided in England, but which by merely negative powers, by 
dexterous activity in secret, and by universally organizing and training 
the people to one determinate end,* attained a power over them as bound- 
less as that of the hierarchy in the middle ages; with this difference, that 
the former strove for light and liberty, the latter for darkness and slavery. 
This is another outbreak of that second great revolution, which solely by 
intellectual means, without any admixture of physical force, is advancing 
to its accomplishment; and whose simple but resistless weapons are pub- 
lic discussion and the press. L'Estrange is a man of philosophical mind 
and unalterable calmness. His manners are those of an- accomplished 
gentleman, who has traversed Europe in various capacities, has a tho- 
rough knowledge of mankind, and with all his mildness cannot always 
conceal the sharp traces of great astuteness. I should call him the ideal 
of a well-intentioned Jesuit. As O'Connell was busy, I took an early 
walk with the friar to a desert island, to which we crossed dry-footed over 
the smooth sand now left by the ebb. Here stand the genuine ruins of 
Derrinane Abbey, to which O'Connell's house is only an appendix. It is 
to be repaired by the family, probably when some of their hopes are ful- 
filled. 

On our return we found O'Connell on the terrace of his castle, like a 
chieftain surrounded by his vassals, and by groups of the neighbouring 
peasantry, who came to receive his instructions, or to whom he laid down 
the law. This he can the more easily do being a lawyer; but nobody 
would dare to appeal from his decisions: O'Connell and the Pope are here 
equally infallible. Lawsuits therefore do not exist within his empire; and 
this extends not only over his own tenantry, but I believe over the whole 
neighbourhood. 

1 wondered, when I afterwards found both O'Connell and L'Estrange 
entirely free from religious bigotry, and even remarked in them very to- 
lerant and philosophical views, though they persisted in choosing to con- 
tinue true Catholics. I wished I had been able to conjure hither some of 
those furious imbeciles among the English Protestants, — as for instance 
Mr. L , who cry out at the Catholics as irrational and bigoted; while 

* All the Catholic children in Ireland are carefully instructed, and can at least 
read; while the Protestant are often utterly ignorant. The morals of the Catholic 
priesthood in Ireland are every where exemplary, as were those of the Reformers in 
France. The oppressed Church is every where the most virtuous; the causes of 
which are easily found. — Editor. 

49 



386 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

they themselves alone, in the true sense of the word, cling to the fanati- 
cal faith of their politico-religious party, and are firmly predetermined to 
keep their long ears for ever closed to reason and humanity. 

In the course of the day we were to have a hare-hunt, (for O'Connell 
has a small pack of hounds,) which would certainly have presented a 
most picturesque spectacle on these mountains and broad naked steeps: 
the bad weather, however, prevented it. I found much greater enjoyment 
in repose, and in the very interesting company, to which I am indebted 
for much instructive information. 

Kenmare, Sept. 30th. 

Although my kind hosts with true Irish hospitality pressed me to stay 
a week longer for a great festival which is in preparation, and to which a 
large company is expected, I did not think it right to take this entirely 
' a la lettre;' besides which I had such a longing after Glengariff, that I 
did not wish to absent myself from it longer than was necessary for the 
end I had in view. I therefore took leave of the family this morning, with 
the sincerest thauks for the friendly welcome they had given me. O'Con- 
nell himself escorted me to the boundaries of his demesne, mounted on a 
large and handsome gray horse, on which he looked more military than ever. 
The rugged way is bare of all vegetation, but affords many sublime views, 
sometimes inland, sometimes to the sea, studded with rocks and islands, 
some of which rise completely isolated out of the water like high-peaked 
mountains. O'Connell pointed out one to me, on which he told me he had 
ordered an ox to be landed that he might fatten on the rich and undisturbed 
herbage. After some days the animal took such decided possession of the 
island that he was furious if any body attempted to land on it, and at- 
tacked and drove away even the fishermen who used to dry their nets on 
the shore. He was often seen, like Jupiter under his transformation, with 
uplifted tail and glaring eyes, bounding furiously along to reconnoitre the 
bounds of his domain, and to see if any intruder dared to approach. The 
emancipated ox at last became so troublesome and dangerous, that they 
were obliged to shoot him. This appeared to me a good satire on the love 
of liberty, which as soon as it has gained the power it seeks, degenerates 
into violence and tyranny; and the association of ideas brought many co- 
mical images involuntarily before my mind. 

We afterwards came to a remarkable ruin, one of those so-called Da- 
nish forts, which were built, not by the Danes but against them. They 
are more than a thousand years old, and the lower walls, although put 
together without mortar, remain in excellent preservation. At the ruins 
of a bridge carried away by the swelling of a mountain-stream, O'Connell 
stopped to take a final leave of me. 1 could not help expressing to the 
champion of the rights of his countrymen, my wish that when we next 
met, the dungeons and fortresses of English intolerance might be over- 
thrown by him and his allies, as completely as these ruined walls had 
been by the swollen and overflowing torrent.* So we parted. 

As I returned by nearly the same way as I had come, I have little new 
to say about it, except that, though the day was fine, it tired me twice as 
much as before; probably because my mind was less excited. Not far 
from Kenmare I met several loads of stones, planks, beer, and butter. 
Every thing is conveyed on the backs of horses. The Irish are very in- 

• The wish of my departed friend is already in part fulfilled, and the future is big 
with yet greater changes. — Editoh. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 387 

genious in means of transport. I have already described their admirable 
cars, with which one horse can so commodiously draw five or six persons. 
They have also a sort of car, equally well contrived, for the carriage of 
hay, wood, &c. ; by means of which one horse does as much work as three 
with us. This is accomplished entirely by the skill with which the weight 
is balanced. A car is loaded with long timber, for instance, in such a 
manner that the horse is hardly visible under the complete covering of 
wood, the ends of which project many yards before the horse's head and 
behind the car. The division of the weight at each end is thus so perfect 
that the timbers press only on one point, and the horse has thus compa- 
ratively little to draw. The driver helps a little, going up or down hill, 
by heaving up or bearing down the ends, which the slightest force is suf- 
ficient to move. 

In the same manner five or six heavy oak planks are laid flat across 
the saddle of a horse, who carries them thus, like a balancing pole, with- 
out much labour, though the same weight in a different volume, a chest 
for instance, would suffice to crush him. They have another ingenious 
contrivance for transporting stone; a sort of wooden baskets or cradles 
which they hang over the saddle, binding them on the horse's back over 
a thick bundle of straw. 

The merry humour and good-natured politeness of the people I met 
were very engaging. I know no nation of which the lower classes appear 
so little selfish; so thankful for the least friendly word vouchsafed to 
them by a gentleman, without the least idea of gain. I really know no 
country in which I would rather be a large landed proprietor than here. 
"What I did elsewhere, and earned only ingratitude and opposition of 
every kind, would here attach ten or twelve thousand people to me body 
and soul; — the only difference is, that here with much less time and cost 
I should have attained infinitely greater results, since here nature and 
man make almost every thing attainable. The people taken in a body, 
with all their wildness, unite the frank honesty and poetical temper of 
the Germans, with the vivacity and quickness of conception of the French, 
and the pliability, naturalness, and submissiveness of the Italians. It 
may with the fullest justice be said of them, that their faults are to be as- 
cribed to others, their virtues only to themselves. Now I am upon this 
subject, I must relate to you an incident of no great importance which 
befell me some days ago: it deserves mention, as illustrative of the na- 
tional character. 

As I was going from Killarney to Kenmare, I met a continual succes- 
sion of people driving cattle from some neighbouring fair. Most of them 
were riding colts they had just bought, without bridles; and as man and 
beast were strangers to each other, the latter were not in a very perfect 
state of subordination: we were therefore often forced to stop. At last 
I grew tired of this; and at the third or fourth rencontre of the kind, 
I called out to the people that I had not time to spend half the day 
on the road on account of their clumsiness; and somewhat hastily ordered 
the coachman to drive on. In in instant two colts set off* with their ri- 
ders, galloping before the carriage as hard as ever they could, while the 
whole drove of cattle took to the mountains. I was now sorry for my 
impatience, and desired the driver to stop again. There were in all four 
or five drovers whom I had thus routed, all sturdy young fellows; and 
the trick I had played them was certainly one of the most disagreeable 
that could be imagined, as it would take them at least half an hour to 
collect their dispersed cattle. If a traveller in a miserable one-horse ve- 



388 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

hide had given such a job to Germans, Englishmen, or Frenchmen, they 
would certainly have attacked him with appropriate abuse, and very 
likely have tried to catch him and do him some injury. The behaviour 
of these good-natured fellows was far different: at once respectful and 
witty. "Oh! murther, murther!" cried one, while his ' crantancarous' 
colt made another attempt to dart up the hill, and nearly threw him; 
" God bless your honour! but every gentleman in England and Ireland 
gets out of the way of cattle! Oh, for God's sake stop now, your honour, 
stop!" I immediately stopped: and after the poor devils had had the 
greatest trouble in fetching back the part of the cattle that had run the 
furthest, they came back to my car, with a "long life to your honour!" 
to thank me for my goodness, and went merrily off with their recaptured 
prize. 1 must confess that their behaviour was far more commendable 
than mine, which I repaired as well as I could by means of a handsome 
present. 

October 1st: Morning. 

Although dreadfully tired I could not sleep last night, and asked the 
host if he had a book. He brought me an old English translation of the 
Sorrows of Werther. You know highly, how intensely I honour our 
prince of poets, and will therefore hardly believe me when I say that I 
had never read this celebrated book. The cause would appear to many 
very childish. The first time it came into my hands, the passage at 
the beginning in which Charlotte wipes the little boy's dirty nose excited 
in me such disgust that I could read no further; and this disagreeable 
image remained always present to my mind. I now, however, set ear- 
nestly to work to read it, struck with the strangeness of the accident 
which led me to read Werther for the first time in a foreign tongue, and 
in the midst of the wild mountains of Ireland. But even here, I must 
honestly confess I could not feel any hearty relish for the antiquated 
" Sufferings;"* the quantity of bread and butter, the provincial and ob- 
solete manners, and even the ideas, which were then new, but are now 
become common-place, — like Mozart's beautiful melodies degraded into 
street ditties; lastly, the involuntary recollection of Potier's admirable 
parody, — it was absolutely impossible for me to work myself up to the 
right "communion frame of mind," as Madame von Frommel calls it. 
But thus much I could perceive, jesting apart, that the book was calcu- 
lated to ' far furore' at one period: for the morbid state of mind under 
which Werther sinks is truly German, and German feeling was just then 
beginning to make its way through the materialism which had taken 
possession of the rest of Europe. Wilhelm Meister indeed followed it 
with far different steps; and Faust has since traversed it with giant 
strides. We have, I think, outgrown the Werther period, but have not 
yet reached that of Faust; nor Will any age, so long as men exist, out- 
grow that. 

In the tragedy of Faust, as in those of Shakspeare, the whole inward 
man is mirrored forth; the principal figure is a personification of the eter- 
nal mysterious longings of the human heart, the restless striving after the 
Unknown and the Unattainable. Hence this drama can obviously never have 
a fully definitive end, even were it extended through many more acts than 
it is. But as the lofty spirit here treads a path dizzy as the bridge of Al 

• The translation of the title of the book is of a piece with all the rest. Leiden 
does not mean sorrows, but sufferings. — Trans. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 389 

Sirat, he is every moment nearer to the bottomless fall than the human 
animal who remains quietly on the secure plain, and feeds. 

A cousin of O'Connell's, who gives hunting parties on the lake of Kil- 
larney, had promised me one for to-morrow. I have, however, a positive 
antipathy to going to see what I have seen before, as long as there is any 
thing new to see; and I cannot imagine that dogs and horses can make 
any great alteration in the features of a scene I know so well. On the other 
hand, in GlengarifF, amiable people and a great deal of novelty awaited 
me: I therefore preferred it, rode once more across the Devil's Mountain, 
this time by daylight, and arrived here about an hour ago. I ' am esta- 
blished in a pretty little room, and all the glories of the Bay are spread 
before my window. 

Before I quitted Kenmare my vanity was put to a severe trial. The 
Irish naivete of the inkeeper's daughter made such an agreeable impres- 
sion on me, that on my return to her father's inn I scarcely talked to any 
body else, and thus won her good graces. She had never quitted her na- 
tive mountains, and was as ignorant of the world as it is possible to con- 
ceive. I asked her, in jest, if she would go with me to Cork. " Oh no," 
said she, " I should be afraid to go so far with you. — Do tell me now 
who you really are: You are a Jew; — that I know already." "Why, 
are you mad?" said I; " what makes you think I must be a Jew?" "Ah, 
you can't deny it; hav'n't you a black beard all round your chin, and five 
or six gold rings on your fingers? And are you not an hour washing your- 
self in a morning, and don't you go through ceremonies such as no Chris- 
tian ever saw? Confess it now, — you are a Jew, ar'n't you?" My dis- 
claimer was of no use. At last, however, she said good-humouredly, that 
if I positively would not allow that I was one, she wished at least that I 
might « become as rich as a Jew,' (an English phrase.) I confirmed this 
with a Christian ' Amen.' 

October 2d. 

lam just returned from an excursion of sixteen miles with Colonel 
W to Hungry Hill, a lofty mountain at the end of Bantry Bay, re- 
markable for its waterfall, and for Thomas O'Rourke's flight to the moon 
on an eagle's back, which began here, and has so often been related in 
prose and verse. Even in Germany this amusing tale has been repeatedly 
translated, and has probably fallen into your hands. The hero of the 

story is a game-keeper of Lord B 's, who is still alive, and almost 

always drunk. On our return Colonel W introduced him to me at 

the inn. He is now extremely proud of his celebrity, and seemed to me 
when I saw him to be projecting another visit to the moon. 

The quantity of rain which lias fallen these few days has added much 
to the beauty of the waterfalls. The fall at Hungry Hill entirely disap- 
pears in dry weather, but after violent rains exceeds the Staubbach and 
Terni. Hungry Hill is a huge mass of naked rock about two thousand 
feet high. On the land side it forms two steep terraces, on the 'plateau' 
between which there is a lake, which of course is not visible from below, 
whence you see only the continuous lines of these colossal terraces. The 
upper one consists of bare rock, and is divided in the middle by a deep 
vertical groove, which looks as if cut by art; the lower, although also free 
from any visible inequality, has its side clothed with heather and coarse 
grass, on which hundreds of goats are seen grazing. 

Through the groove or channel mentioned above the mass of water 
shoots from the highest point of the mountain, falls into the lake on the 



390 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

lower terrace, and filling that, rushes down afresh in four distinct cas- 
cades on the valley below. These form such vast arches, that the goats 
feed peacefully under them, while the streams convert the meadows be- 
low into a temporary lake. 

As the spectator who stands below cannot see the division between the 
upper and the lower falls, nor the lake which lies between them, the 
whole appears one enormous cataract, the eft'ect of which exceeds all de- 
scription. Colonel W assured me that when the waters are at the 

highest he has seen the arch so enormous, that, to use his expression, a 
regiment Of soldiers might have marched under it without a man being 
wetted ; and, as he added, the noise would serve admirably for the thun- 
der of the cannon. 

One of the neighbouring glens was, according to the somewhat fabu- 
lous history of Ireland, the scene of a memorable battle between the great 
O'Sullivan and O'Donovan. The people show the remains of a very old 
arbutus, on which, as they relate, O'Donovan was hanged. It is very cer- 
tain that money and jewels have recently been found buried deep in the 
earth in this enclosure. 

The eagles of these mountains, who build on inaccessible rocks, play 
a very principal part in the popular stories. They are extremely large 
and strong, and it is certain that they sometimes carry off' even children. 
Some time ago an eagle carried oft" a boy of three years old, and deposited 
him, probably because he was too heavy, nearly uninjured on a shelf of 
rock, to which the people below climbed and saved him. The new Gany- 
mede, the 'corpus delicti,' is now living, and in full vigour. Another 
more tragical circumstance of the same kind occurred a few months ago. 
An eagle bore off a little girl before her father's eyes, and disappeared 
with her among the rocks; nor could the least trace of the poor child ever 
be discovered. 

October 3d. 

Col. W is as great a ' parkomane' as I, but not quite such a ' gour- 
met.' Field-sports by land and water furnish his table with many deli- 
cacies. The grouse or moor-fowl are particularly good; and the oyster- 
bed on the edge of the park supplies oysters of a peculiar fine flavour, and 
as large as a plate. The bay swarms with fish and sea-dogs: — I saw one 
of the latter sitting on a projecting cliff" just opposite my window, and lis- 
tening with a delighted and almost dancing motion to the music of a bag- 
pipe which resounded from a neighbouring public-house. These creatures 
are so passionately fond of music, that they follow the pleasure-boats, 
with bands of music on board, in herds of twenty or thirty. They are 
decoyed in this way by sportsmen. It is really barbarous thus to abuse 
their love of the arts! 

Unfortunately it rained all day, so that I was obliged to remain in the 
house. In the morning I attended the daily worship of the family, the 
female members of which are somewhat bigoted as to form, though, as it 
seemed to me, sincerely pious. We all sat round in a circle, and the 
mother read one verse out of the Church of England Prayer-book, the 
eldest daughter the next, and so on, alternately, imitating the parson and 
clerk at a church. After this, the daughter, who has something reserved 
and enthusiastic about her, began a strange and very long prayer, which 
lasted a full quarter of an hour; during which all, (and of course I among 
the number,) turned decorously towards the wall, fell on their knees be- 
fore their chair, and hid their faces in their hands. The mother sighed 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 391 

and groaned; the father seemed somewhat 'ennuye;' the youngest 
daughter, — a charming girl, who is a good deal more mundane than her 
sister, — had now and then fits of absence; and the son had thought it ex- 
pedient to absent himself altogether. I, who think every sincere feeling 
or virtuous aspiration, at whatever time of the day, a prayer to God, be- 
lieved myself not impiously employed in observing a little what was 
going on. 

After the company had all stood up, brushed their knees, and smooth- 
ed down their petticoats, (for English enthusiasm does not easily forget 
itself,) a chapter from the Gospel was read by the mother. The one 
chosen was that in which six thousand men were fed on three loaves and 
two fishes, if I remember right, and much was still left remaining. 

Happily for us, our dinner was not measured out to us upon this scale, 
and the gifts of God were consumed with great cheerfulness and satisfac- 
tion. To this, however, I soon gave an involuntary shock: I happened 
to speak in jest of the comet of the year 1832, which, it is predicted, is 
to approach near the earth's orbit than any hitherto known. I remarked 
that, according to Lalande's reckoning, a comet which should approach 
within fifty thousand miles of the earth must inevitably exercise such a 
power of attraction as to raise the waters of the sea above the top of 
Chimborazo. If the one of 1832 comes so near us, said I, we shall in- 
fallibly all be drowned. " I beg your pardon, that is.impossible," replied 

Mrs. W very earnestly, "for that would be a second deluge, and 

you appear to have entirely forgotten that we are promised in the Bible 
that there should never be another deluge, but that the earth should at 
last be destroyed by fire." (' II faut avouer que la faveur n'est pas 
grande.') " That this destruction is at hand," continued she, sighing, 
" I certainly believe; for the most learned of our pious men are agreed 
that we are now, probably, in the seventh kingdom of the Revelation of 
St. John, in which the end of the world is predicted, and in which our 
Saviour will come to judge us." What singular people these 'saints' are! 
On this, mother and daughter fell into such a violent, and at last such a 
bitter dispute, that I, unworthy layman, was obliged to interpose, and 
endeavour to re-establish peace. The question was, whether, at the time 
of this final catastrophe, men were to be immediately judged and then 
burnt, or first burnt and then judged. The daughter indignantly asked 
('je vous jure que je ne brode pas') if our Saviour, on his coming,.was to 
wait to pronounce judgment till the world was burnt? She said it was 
plainly written in the Scriptures that he would come to judge the quick 
and the dead; and how would this be possible if all were first burnt? It 
was clear that the world would not be burnt till all were judged. This 
the mother declared was perfect * nonsense!' — that men must necessarily 
first die, before they could receive either eternal blessedness or damna- 
tion, — that the passage which speaks of the quick and the dead, regarded 
only on the one hand those who would be still living at the time of the 
conflagration, or on the other, those who had long lain in the grave. She 
insisted therefore, "first burnt, and t hen judged." Both now appealed to 
me, in the hope of strengthening themselves by the accession of a partisan. 
I ventured to reply that I really was not much skilled in these details, 
and that their dispute appeared to me very like that in which Madame du 
Defiant was called upon to decide, viz., whether St. Denis had walked 
one mile or six without his head: to which she replied, " que dans ces 
sortes de choses ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute!" That I must 
confess that in the doctrines of Christ I had always chiefly sought to im- 



392 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

bibe rules of duty, confidence in God, meekness, and love to man, though 
I had unhappily rarely succeeded to the extent of my wishes. I hoped, 
however, that I might dismiss all anxiety as to whether we were to be 
first judged and then burnt, or first burnt and then judged; that I believed 
whatever God did was perfectly well done. I must confess that I con- 
sidered myself just as much in the hand of God, and just as near to his 
power, in the present life as after the close of my earthly career, or even 
after the destruction of the little globe which we call ' the world.' That 
judgment was in my opinion for ever going on, and was as eternally ac- 
tive as the spirit which creates and vivifies the universe. This confession 
of faith had the effect of entirely reconciling the combatants, by uniting 
them against me. I retreated from the field, however, in so dexterous a 
manner as not entirely to lose their favour. 

In the evening, between torrents of rain, twilight, and sunset, we had 
another magnificent effect of light. Our waterfall in the park was so 
swollen that it took up itself to thunder a little too, and grass and bush 
were prettily illuminated with gay sunbeams. We walked about till it 
was quite dark, saw the Great Sugar-loaf gradually change its hue from 
dark blue into rose-colour, and feasted our eyes on the clear mirror of the 
lake, the leaping of the fish on its surface, and the peaceful sporting of 
the otters. 

Every thing here js beautiful,— even the air, which is famed for its sa- 
lubrity. There are no tormenting insects; for the bay is so deep, that 
the ebb leaves no muddy shore, and the constant gentle breeze of the 
valley is probably not agreeable to them. The climate is extremely 
equable, neither too hot nor too cold; and the vegetation so luxuriant, that 
only one thing more and one less are wanting to clothe the greater part of 
the bare mountains, and even the interstices between the rocks, with the 
richest and most beautiful woods: these two things are, planters, and 
goats. The former have no money, or none that they choose to spend in 
planting here; the latter suffer nothing to grow that is not enclosed within 
double walls. It appears that these mountains were formerly covered 
with forests; but the English, who have never had any other thought with 
regard to Ireland but how to draw as much money from her as possible, 
felled them all. Their remains are still visible in many places. 

Another advantage of this spot is, to my taste at least, its perfect seclu- 
sion. .It can hardly be reached in a carriage; and with the exception of a 
few curious travellers, like myself, no attempt is made to overcome the 
difficulty of the approach. It is inhabited by a good-natured people, not 
congregated in villages, but scattered in solitary dwellings amid the moun- 
tains, and living a patriarchal life, unspoiled by the tumult of cities. Nor 
are they so distressingly poor as in other parts of the country: their wants 
are few; turf for fuel they have for the fetching, grass for their cows in 
the bogs, and the sea supplies them with an abundance offish far beyond 
what they can consume. For a landowner, inspired with a spirit of enter- 
prize and a love of improvement, an inexhaustible field here presents it- 
self. Were I a capitalist, this is the spot where I would settle. 

My worthy host takes upon himself to forward this letter immediately. 
Heaven grant that it may find you in the same happy state of mind which 
has inspired it! Remember the favourite saying of my venerable ances- 
tress, — 'Coeur content, grand talent' 

Your truly devoted, L . 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 393 

LETTER XXXV. 

Glengariff, October 4/A, 1828. 
Dear Julia, 

To-morrow I set out, 'et bien a regret' I carry with me a precious 
memorial, — one of the few perfectly delightful pictures which I have met 
with in my wanderings. 

In my walk this morning, I found heath-plants of such luxuriance hang- 
ing from the rocks, that one stalk measured ten feet in length. The gar- 
dener, who accompanied me, drew my attention to another curiosity. In 
a secluded spot, not far from the pretty rustic dairy, a swarm of bees had 
made a large honeycomb in the open air; it was suspended to the branch 
of a blackberry-bush in the thicket. The weight of the honey bowed the 
branch to the earth; and they were still busily adding to the store. The 
dairy is roofed with earth, out of which the purple heather is growing. A 
clear spring flows through it, on whose banks the Egyptian lotus thrives 
admirably, and stands through the winter. 

In the afternoon I rode out with Colonel W to visit an eagle's nest. 

We first passed the belt of wood in which Lord B 's pretty shooting- 
lodge stands, then forded the swollen river three times, and after some 
hours riding, reached a wild desert, where at the foot of a perpendicular 
rock stand two solitary huts. About five hundred feet over head is the 
eagle's eirie, in a cleft overhung with ivy. At their hatching season they 
are frequently seen flying home with fowls, hares, lambs, &c. for the 
family table; by some curious instinct, however, they are warned never 
to carry off any thing from the two families below them, but to respect the 
same laws of hospitality which are observed towards themselves. I was 
greatly disappointed that these monarchs of the -rocks did not make their 
appearance; they were both gone on some distant expedition. 

We returned across the Sugar-loaf. This is the haunt of a wild hunts- 
man, and no mortal tally-ho may sound as far as his right of sporting ex- 
tends. If any attempt it, he quickly rushes by with all his wild troop, 
and hurries the rash offender along in his train. He is of a totally different 
nature from his German comrade. He is an elfin king, as small as Tom 
Thumb, splendidly dressed in emerald green, and accompanied by a train 
mounted on horses as big as rats, who gallop over rock and sea with the 
swiftness of lightning. The Sugar-loaf itself is the great resb*rt of all the 
Irish fairies: its caverns are full of fossil-shells and stones of fantastic 
shapes, which excite the curiosity of the visitor; but no native would pass 
a night in one of them for all the treasures the earth contains. From the 
summit of this mountain, or rather rock, down to the cavern, a strange 
sport of nature is visible in clear weather; — two channels or grooves, 
winding, but always parallel, which in the distance look exactly like ruts: 
what could they be but the track of the fairy queen's carriage, in which 
indeed many an old mountaineer has seen her at rise or set of sun, riding 
in unearthly pomp to grace the annual feast with her presence. The old 
man would doubtless be ready to confirm his statement with the most so- 
lemn oaths, — for he believes it. This it is which gives to the legends of 
the Irish such a wonderful charm that it is almost impossible to with- 
stand it. 

Colonel W , who was formerly a passionate lover of the chase, 

50 



394 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

knows every mountain in the district from the summit to the foot, and 
'chemin faisant,' told me so many interesting particulars ab'out them, 
that my letter would never come to an end if I attempted to make it the 
faithful echo of all his stories. 

Hunting is here attended with dangers of no trifling kind. They are of 
three sorts: first, the being suddenly surprised in the midst of the rocks 
with one of those cold fogs which here frequently come on, and enwrap 
the wanderer with almost instant darkness and icy chill; he has then only 
the alternative either of perishing from cold (for the fogs sometimes hang 
in the gorges for whole days and nights,) or of falling headlong down 
some invisible precipice. If he is in favour with the fairies, he emerges 
happily into light; but wo to him who has incurred their displeasure! — 
his friends find him the next morning frozen or dashed to pieces. The 
second peril is of quite a different kind. On the wide interminable table- 
lands, which blend with the horizon like the sea, not a bush or hillock 
breaking the sublime monotony, are extensive bogs, which the game (the 
grouse, a bird somewhat like a partridge, peculiar to the British islands,) 
chooses as its favourite haunt. These bogs are full of little clumps like 
mole-hills, formed by the heather, scattered about at intervals. The bogs 
can only be traversed by jumping from one of these clumps to another: if 
in the ardour of the chase the sportsman misses his leap, and does not 
find another clump close by to jump to instantly, he 'is certain to sink in 
the morass. The only means of deliverance is instantly to stretch out his 
arms, or to hold his gun horizontally, till help arrives, or till he can strug- 
gle on to the next clump. 

But worse and more tremendous than all this, is an attack from one of 

the wild oxen which inhabit these mountains. Colonel W has been 

several times in this predicament, and always had the good fortune to 
escape, though in different ways. Once he or his servant shot the bull be- 
fore he came up with them: another time he took refuge in one of the bogs 
I have just described, where the furious beast dare not follow him, but 
laid regular siege to him for more than an hour. The history of his latest 
adventure seemed to me particularly curious, and proves that man, with 
strength, courage and address, may single-handed resist any other living 

creature. Colonel W was accompanied by a friend, and by a native 

of these mountains, who led the dogs, and was furnished with a long white 
staff, such as is in use here. Just as the Colonel's friend shot a grouse, 
he saw at the distance of about eighty feet a bull advancing furiously to- 
wards them.- Colonel W called out to his friend to load instantly, 

while he fired; and was taking aim, when the man called out, "Promise 
me a glass of whiskey extra, and I will manage the beast by myself." 

W fired, but his gun missed fire; his friend had not loaded; and he 

had hardly time to call out, " You shall have a dozen bottles," when this 
hero of the mountains ran towards the ox at the same speed with which it 
was rushing upon them. In the twinkling of an eye they were together. 
The young man, with singular dexterity, caught the horns of the bull, 
whose head grazed the earth, darted a step sideways, and then during the 
spring ot his antagonist, making a similar step backwards, with the ra- 
pidity of lightning caught the bull's tail, without letting go his stick. All 
this was done with the quickness of thought; and now began the strangest 
race that ever was beheld. The bull tried by every means to get rid of 
the burthen hanging at his tail, but in vain. Up hill and down, over rock, 
and through river, he ran like mad; while his companion, like a Kobold, 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 395 

swung himself over every obstacle, often flying rather than running, at 
the end of the creature's tail. In a short time the bull was wearied by 
fear and fatigue, and at length sank down exhausted and powerless at the 
foot of a green declivity, immediately in front of the spot where Colonel 

W and his friend beheld with astonishment the issue of the contest. 

But his punishment only now began, and probably his vicious temper was 
on that day cured for ever. For now the mountaineer began to employ 
his stick, weighted with lead and armed with an iron point, which he had 
providentially kept as an instrument of correction, and belabouring the 
beast with all his might, forced him to crawl down the mountain, where 
he at length sank, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and panting 

for breath, at Colonel W 's feet, who left him in this state of total 

exhaustion. The young peasant, whom Colonel W described as a 

wonder of youthful power and agility, seemed, on the contrary, not the 
least fatigued by his chase, nor vain of his achievement; but coolly look- 
ing about for his powder-horn and his dogs, did not expend a word on the 

past, except just to wink to Colonel W , and say, "Now, master, 

don't forget the bottles." 

The sight of a fox-chase among these rocks must be magnificent, — now 
sweeping along their heights or sides, — now fox and hounds darting down 
the steep declivities, all suddenly vanishing like a shadowy picture in the 

gorges. Colonel W once saw such a one from Hungry Hill, in which 

the whole pack ran under the arch of the waterfall, while their cry min- 
gled wildly with the roaring of the cataract, till at last Reynard experi- 
enced the same lot which had befallen three or four of the dogs; he slipped 
from the polished rock, and fell, amid shouts and halloos, from a height 
of several hundred feet into the midst of the hunters, who were looking 
on at their ease from the meadow below. 

Shall I tell you any more stories? — Well, then, once more for witches 
and fairies: saddle me the poney, and away to the land of tales and le- 
gends; of the land-rocks, and the waves which for ages have fretted them 
away with their snow-white teeth. 

Jump up behind me, Julia, 'en croupe,' like an Irish girl, and follow 
me quickly through the air, back to Iveragh, O'Connell's wild region. 
Truly is it a land of the eagle and the vulture, of the stormy wave and 
the rugged rock! But there is a spot in Ballinskellig bay, not far from 
O'Connell's Castle-abbey, where in old times many a dance was danced, 
and many a wedding celebrated. For peaceful and lovely was the lonely 
spot, with its velvet turf; its high walls of rock sheltered it from the storm, 
and sand smooth as satin edged the sea, which seemed to sleep, like the 
entire creation, in the clear moonlight, its little billows only lightly ruf- 
fled by the zephyr's breath, rolling and curling with a dreamy soothing 
motion. 



LETTER XXXVI. 

Macroom, October 5th, 1828. 
Dearest One, 

The parting was hard; but you who wish me in a very different place, 
will say that I have staid quite long enough. I tore myself away from 
these excellent people and their romantic dwelling. It was Sunday; and 



396 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the worthy lady, in spite of her manifest regard for me, could not help 
exclaiming reproachfully, " But how is it possible that a good man like 
you can set out upon a journey on a Sunday?" You know that the English 
have stamped this day with a sort of death-like character; dancing, music 
and singing are forbidden; indeed, the severely pious hang their canary- 
birds in some remote corners, that no voice of song may offend their ears 
during these holy hours. This idolatry of the Sunday began in the time 
of James the First, and was the cause of furious dissentions. No bread 
must be baked, and no useful work performed; but drunkenness and other 
vices thrive more luxuriantly than on the week-days. I have observed that 
the streets are never so bestrewed with drunken people as on Sunday 
evenings; nor, as is well known to the police, are the resorts of vice ever 
so filled. Many English people think dancing on a Sunday unquestion- 
ably a greater crime than a little theft or so; and I lately read in print a 
history of Whitby, in which it was seriously affirmed, that the rich abbey 
there was doubtless destroyed because the monks did not only indulge in 
every possible crime, rape and murder not excepted, but their sinful ab- 
bot had permitted the repairs of«the abbey and other labours to go on on 
a Sabbath-day. 

The worthy Mrs. W was infected with this same strange conceit; 

and it was somewhat difficult for me to excuse my half-committed sin on 
the ground of urgent necessity. To appease her, I went first with the 

whole family along the bay to B church, which was quite out of my 

way. In going along, I related to her the strange vision of one of the 

sons of my former excellent host, Captain B , by which he had been 

induced to go over to the Catholic church. He was, as he himself told 
me, a most zealous Protestant and Orangeman, and went one day into a 
Catholic chapel in Dublin, rather with the intention of making himself 
merry at the ceremonies than from any better motive. But the beautiful 
music touched him against his will; and as he raised his eyes to the high 
altar, the Redeemer stood bodily before him, his eyes fixed intently on 
him with an expression of angelic mildness. The divine vision smiled 
upon him, beckoned with his hand, and then slowly ascended, still look- 
ing fixedly at him, till at length it disappeared, borne by angels through 

the dome. From this moment B was persuaded he was an especial 

object of the divine favour; and in a few days he became a member of 
another church which has the exclusive privilege of ensuring salvation, 
(for the orthodox English Protestants also believe that they enjoy this 
monopoly.) How philosophically did my pious friends reason on this con- 
version! " Is it possible!" exclaimed they. " What superstition! With- 
out doubt this was either a feverish delirium, or the man is a hypocrite, 
and has good reasons for what he does. Either he is mad, or he invented 
the story for his own profit." 

Oh, men, men! How justly does Christ say, "Ye behold the mote in 
the eye of another; ye cannot see the beam in your own!" No doubt this 
is the case with us all, more or less; and be assured I make no exception 
in favour of your poor friend. 

We parted at last, not without emotion; and I seated myself on a moun- 
tain car, drawn by a horse whose appearance was by no means brilliant. 
The young ladies were greatly delighted at my eccentric mode of travel- 
ling. The journey I had to accomplish was thirty miles, and began most 
tediously. After a little time the wretched horse was so restive at going 
up hill, that I was obliged to alight, rather than run the risk of being dash- 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 397 

ed down a precipice. The stubborn beast was now forced to be constantly 
led, without which he would not advance a single step. For a long while 
the driver trotted sturdily on by his side, but at length could go no fur- 
ther; and Heaven knows what would have become of us, had we not 
luckily met a man on horseback, who consented to harness in his horse 
instead of ours. I reached Macroom late in the evening. Nothing struck 
me much in the way but a long and deep glen, in which at the time of 
the White Boy conspiracies, Lord B and Colonel W were at- 
tacked by a party who were posted on the heights, and had a narrow 
escape for their lives. The White Boys had taken their measures ex- 
tremely well, and during the night had loosened a great mass of rock, 
which they suddenly rolled down directly across the road through which 
the troops were marching. By this means the detachment of cavalry was 
not onlv prevented from advancing, but was cut oft" in its rear, and thus 
placed in a desperate situation. A great many were killed; the two gen- 
tlemen, who rode capital hunters, luckily escaped. Their good steeds 
climbed up the almost inaccessible side of a rock, amidst an incessant 

shower of musketry. Colonel W ■ was slightly wounded in the right 

arm; Lord B escaped quite unhurt. 

In this extremely wild region, not far from hence, lies a large lake with 
a woody island in its centre. Here stands a chapel of great sanctity, to 
which numerous pilgrimages are yearly made. It was too late for me to 
see it more nearly. 

Macroom is a cheerful pretty place, with a handsome house belonging 
to the uncle of the beautiful African, or rather of her husband. She gave 
me a letter to him, but I had not time to use it. 

Cork, Oct. 6th. 

I left Macroom very early in a 'gingle,' a sort of covered stage with 
two horses. It rained and blew again; for, dear Julia, I find that I am no 
longer, as the Irish prettily say, 'on the sunny side of life.' 

My fellow-travellers were three women and a great cub of five years 
old, who made himself extremely disagreeable, and was horribly spoiled 
by his pretty and lively mamma. Although he had a great loaf, and a 
cake of similar dimensions, with which he was incessantly stuffing him- 
self, and filling the coach with bits and crumbs, his ill humour broke out 
at every moment. The scream he then set up, and the stamping of his 
feet, which he qften placed upon mine without the slightest reserve; the 
coaxings of the mother, and her cries for help to her husband on the out- 
side; then her incessant prayers to 'stop just a moment,' because the poor 
little dear was ill with the motion of the coach, or because he was thirsty, 
or because something or other; her keeping the windows hermetically 
closed for fear he should catch cold, in spite of his furred coat; — it was 
really a trial of fortitude. The young woman seemed as anxious for her- 
self as for her child; whenever the coach leaned a little on one side, she 
began to scream, and clung to me with both hands, taking me almost 
round. the neck. This was the most endurable of my sufferings; and I 
often amused myself with increasing her fright. In the intervals she en- 
larged with great patriotism on the beauty of the country, pointed out to 
me the fine ruins, and told me their histories. At last she showed me a 
pointed and tower-like stone, and said that a Danish king had thrown 
this across the sea to show his strength. She would have her husband get 
down from the roof to admire this stone, and remarked to him with some 



398 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

contempt that the men now-a-days were miserable feeble pigmies com- 
pared to those giants. At the same time she gave him the boy to take be- 
side him. The poor devil made a long face, pulled his nightcap over his 
ears, and quietly obeyed orders. 

The country was now very fertile, full of rich meadows, with here and 
there a stately mansion. Cork lies most picturesquely in a deep valley 
on the sea-shore. It has an air of antiquity, which is rendered more pe- 
culiar by the roofs of scale-like slates with which many of the houses are 
covered. The two new prisons are magnificent buildings; they are erect- 
ed, the one by the city, the other by the county: the former is in an an- 
tique taste, the latter in the perfectly Gothic style, and has the appear- 
ance of a great fortress. 

After I had breakfasted, I hired what they call here a whale-boat, nar- 
row and pointed at each end, and thence safer and swifter, and sailed 
with a fair wind along the bay, which is called the * river of Cork,' to 
Cove, where I intended to dine. A part of this bay, which is about three- 
quarters of a mile broad, forms one of the most beautiful harbours in the 
world. Both shores consist of high hills, covered with palaces, villas, 
country-seats, parks, and gardens. On either side, rising in unequal 
height, they form the richest and most varied boundary. By degrees the 
city advances into the middle of the picture, and terminates on the brow 
of the highest hill, with the imposing mass of the barracks. This is the 
view from the sea. Towards Cove it frequently changes, as the windings 
of the channel present objects in different positions. One of these pictures 
was finely bounded by a Gothic castle, wnich has been built with great 
good taste by the city on a bold projecting rock. Its admirable site not 
only gives it importance, but it appears, if I may so say, as if it grew 
there naturally; while buildings of this kind in ordinary situations so 
often strike one as unpleasant ' hors d'eeuvres.' Though I think we excel 
the English in the higher sorts of architecture, we are very deficient in 
attention to the objects and the scenery which surround our buildings; 
and yet these are the circumstances which ought generally to decide the 
style. 

This castle seemed built for one of the sea-kings, for the only entrance 
is from the sea. A colossal gate, adorned with a coat of arms, beneath 
which the waves wash the steps, overarches the dark entry. I thought of 
Folko with the vulture's wings returning hither after a successful sea- 
fight; and peopled the deep with fantastic beings from Fouque's " Magic 
Ring." 

We sailed with a fair wind past Passage, a fishing village, and then 
past Monkstown, which takes its name from a ruin of a monastery in a 
wood above. The rain, which had ceased for a time, here began to fall 
again, but I was requited by a splendid effect. We turned, near the 
island of Arboul, into the narrow bay of Cove, which afforded a very 
beautiful view; its mouth is bounded on the left by a high coast, covered 
with houses and gardens; on the right by the rocky island I have just 
named, on which are situated a fort, marine buildings, and store-houses 
containing the 'materiel' for the naval service; before us, in the bay 
itself, lay several line-of-battle ships and frigates, and another convict 
ship at anchor; behind them arose the town of Cove, built in steps or ter- 
races on the side of the mountain. 

While all this was full in our view, the sun, now near its setting, broke 
forth from a flame-coloured spot in the heavens, below the rain clouds, 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 399 

while a rainbow more perfect and deeply coloured than I ever remember 
to have seen, with both feet on the sea, spanned the entrance of the bay 
like a portal of flowers leading from earth to heaven. Within its gigantic 
arch appeared the sea and the ships, shaded from the sun's rays by a 
mountain behind us perfectly black; in contrast with which the evening 
glow resting on the lofty amphitheatre of Cove, shed such a glory that 
the sea-mews poised in it looked like glittering silver, and every window 
in the town, (which is spread out on the side of the hill,) gleamed like 
burnished gold. This indescribably beautiful scene not only lasted till 
we entered the bay, but just before we landed the rainbow doubled itself, 
each bow glowing in equal beauty of colour. We had hardly set foot on 
the shore when both disappeared almost instantaneously. 

I now established myself very agreeably at the window of the little inn, 
in the hope of an excellent fast-day dinner of the most delicate fresh fish. 
No part of my scheme was verified but the fasting; not a fish, not an 
oyster was to be had. This happens oftener than you would think in the 
little fishing towns on the coast, every thing ' disponible' being imme- 
diately carried to the great cities. In this point of view therefore I attain- 
ed my end but badly, and I was forced to content myself with the eternal 
'mutton-chops.' However, I did not suffer this to disturb my equanimity. 
I read an old newspaper or two, not having seen one for a long time, and 
took my way homewards by land, when it was nearly dark. An open 
car, with a bundle of straw as a seat, was the only carriage I could get. 
The wind blew cold and gusty, and I was obliged to wrap myself closely 
in my cloak. We skirted the shore at a considerable elevation, and the 
numerous lights of. the ships and marine buildings below us were like an 
illumination. Five flickering flames danced like Will-o'-the-wisps on the 
black convict ship, and the report of a cannon from the guard-ship thun- 
dered through the stillness of night. 

As this view disappeared, I turned my eyes to the unusually clear fir- 
mament. Who can look intently on the sublime and holy beauty of those 
glittering worlds, and not be penetrated by the deepest and the sweetest 
emotions ? They are the characters by which God has from all time spoken 
most clearly to the soul of man; and yet I had not thought of these hea- 
venly lights so long as the earthly ones sparkled before me! But thus is 
it ever. When earth forsakes us, we seek heaven. Earth is nearer, and 
her authority more powerful with us; just as the peasant stands more in 
awe of the justice than of the king; the soldier fears the lieutenant more 
than the general; the courtier is more assiduous to please the favourite 
than the monarch; and lastly, the fanatic — but we won't philosophize fur- 
ther about it, dear Julia; for I need not repeat to you, * qu'il ne faut pas 
prendre le valet pour le roi.' 

Mitchelstown, October 9th. — Morning. 
At four o'clock yesterday afternoon I left Cork by the mail. I was 
seated by the coachman, whose four horses I occasionally drove. For 
about three miles from the city the country continues picturesque ; it 
then became uninteresting, and soon it was too dark to distinguish. 
After a few stages we left most of our passengers, and I took my seat 
inside the coach, where I was destined to enjoy a three hours tete-a-tete 
with a lady, — unfortunately, however, she was seventy, and a Puritan. 
This disagreeably company, combined with the eulogies which a former 
travelling companion had pronounced on the newly built Gothic castle 



400 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

at Mitchelstown, induced me to leave the mail in the middle of the night, 
and to stay here till the morrow. At seven o'clock I was waked to go 
to view this much lauded edifice. I was sorely disappointed, as were 
some other strangers who had been drawn hither by the same object. 
We were certainly shown a huge heap of stone which had cost its pos- 
sessor 50,000/.; butene ingredient was unluckily forgotten, — good taste. 
The building is, in the first place, much too high for its extent ; the 
style is confused without variety; the outline heavy, and the effect small, 
though the mass is great. It stands, too, on the bare turf, without the 
slightest picturesque break, which castles in the Gothic or kindred styles 
peculiarly need; and the inconsiderable park possessed neither a hand- 
some group of trees nor a prospect worth describing. 

I have thrown away so many words on this abortive work, because, 
from the name of its possessor, and the great cost of its erection, it en- 
joys a certain reputation in Ireland. Yet how infinitely preferable is the 

place of my excellent Colonel W , on which perhaps an eighth part 

of the money has been spent. 

The internal decorations of the castle are of a piece with its exterior: 
in five minutes we had quite enough of them, and as we heard of a fine 
prospect from the top of the tower, but the key was no where to be found, 
we all returned in no very good-humour to our inn. Here one of the 
strangers entertained me during breakfast -with all sorts of interesting 
stories of this part of the country and its inhabitants. He told me among 

other things, that Lord K and his family had been remarkable for 

their very extraordinary adventures. He is now one of the most zealous 
Orangemen, and is rather feared than loved. His father, when just 
twelve years old, was married to the heiress of the whole property now 
possessed by the family, who was just ten. The tutor and governess 
received the strictest injunctions to watch the young couple most nar- 
rowly, and to prevent every possibility of a tete-a-tete. But ' somehow 
or other,' as my informant said, three years afterwards they found means 
to elude their vigilance, and the present Lord was the result of this little 
* equipee.' They had afterwards several children, of whom I happened 
to know one at Vienna. He was a remarkably handsome man, and 
celebrated for his 'bonnes fortunes;' atone time the avowed lover of the 

Duchess of , whom he treated with so little ceremony, that once 

when he invited me to breakfast at the hotel where they were living, I 
found the Duchess alone, and he came into the room some time after, in 
dressing gown and slippers, out of his or their chamber. 

The youngest child grew up to be one of the most attractive girls in 
Ireland. She was just sixteen when a cousin on the mother's side, a 

married man, named F , who then enjoyed the greatest celebrity as 

a resistless seducer, fell in love with her, and confirmed his reputation 
in so conspicuous a manner, that he actually brought this beautiful girl, 
the idolized daughter of an earl, not only to sacrifice her innocence to 
him, but to accompany him to England as his avowed mistress. Here 
they lived for a year, at first in concealment; but at last he had the 
effrontery to take her to one of the most frequented watering-places. 
Her abode was of course discovered, and she was carried off at her 
father's command, and placed in safe custody in the north of England. 
F — — > perhaps only irritated by the resistance of the family, determined, 
let it cost what it would, to get her again into his power; and as he 
thought she had been taken to her father's residence, he hurried off to 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 401 

Ireland in disguise. Here he lodged in the very inn in which we were 
breakfasting, and endeavoured to discover the place of her concealment. 
His minute inquiries, his mysterious behaviour, and the unlucky accident 
that a former acquaintance of his met him and remarked that he never 
saw a greater resemblance than between this stranger and the notorious 

F , awakened the suspicions of the host, who immediately went to 

impart them to Lord K . The Earl received the communication 

with perfect apparent indifference, and only enjoined on the informer 
absolute secrecy. He then asked at what hour the stranger generally 
rose; learned that it was never before eight: dismissed the host with a 
present, — and added, that he would examine into the matter himself at 
six o'clock the next morning, at which hour he desired him to expect him, 
and to be quite alone. Morning came; and with it, punctually, the 
Earl. Without any further inquiry he went up stairs accompanied by 
the host, and desired the stranger's servant to open his master's door 
instantly. The man refused; on which he broke open the door with his 

foot, walked up to the bed in which F , awakened by the noise, had 

just raised himself, looked intently at him; and as soon as he had satisfied 
himself of his identity, drew a pistol from his pocket, and with perfect 
coolness blew out the brains of this modern Don Juan, who sank back in 
the bed without a groan. The sequel proves how lightly the laws sit on 
great men in England, when there is not a still greater who has an in- 
terest in putting them in force. Lord K was, indeed, brought to 

trial; but as he had taken good care to arrange the affair with the only 
two witnesses, and to get them out of the way, he was acquitted for want 
of evidence. No man in England can be tried twice for the same offence; 
so that from this moment, in spite of the perfect notoriety of the murder, 
all danger to the murderer was at an end. The unhappy girl soon after 

disappeared,— it was reported, died. Lord K long survived her; 

and at a very late period of his life was famed for the beauty of his mis- 
tresses, one of whom inhabited each of his seats. The consequences of 
this depravity, at length, was a separation from his wife, and the bitter 
hostility and litigation which subsisted between them till his death. 
Meanwhile his eldest son, the present Earl, had married, while yet a 
minor, in Sicily; had already three children by his young wife, and lived 
completely separated from his country; when suddenly he received a 
most affectionate invitation from his father, who promised to forget and 
forgive the past. He was induced by this to set out for Ireland with all 
his family. Scarcely was he returned, when his father employed all his 
influence to get the marriage annulled. The young mother was sent 
home; and the children, declared illegitimate, were disposed of in Eng- 
land. The son, contrary to all expectation, seems to have given in to 
his father's schemes without much difficulty, and soon after married a 
rich heiress. After his father's death he carried on a still fiercer lawsuit 
with his mother than his father had done, in order to get possession of an 
estate which she refused him. In this, however, he could not accomplish 
his end; nor could she at a later period obtain hers, which was to disin- 
herit him entirely. 

Here is a picture of the manners of the great and noble of the eighteenth 
century. 

Cashel. — Evening. 

My communicative friend travelled on with me to Cashel. The wea- 

51 



402 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ther was tolerable, — that is, it did not rain, and that was sufficient in this 
watery land to set my worthy Irishman repeatedly exclaiming, " What 
a delightful day!" " What lovely weather!" — I proposed to go a part 
of the way on foot; on which a tall lad of eighteen, ragged ' comme de 
raison,' offered himself as guide. He walked with great difficulty in a 
sort of slippers, and appeared to have wounded his feet. 1 asked him if 
that was the case: "Oh no," said he, " it's only the shoes I've put on, 
because I'm going to be a soldier, and must get used to wearing shoes: 
but the things are such a plague that I can't get on with them at all." 

After my usual fashion of disdaining no sources of information, — by 
which means I often glean some ears from conversation even with the low- 
est, — I made inquiries of my guide as to the present state of his country. 
" Yes," said he, " its quiet enough here at present, but in Tipperary, 
which we shall soon come to, especially oft' to the north, they know how 
to stand against the Orangemen: O'Connell and the Association have or- 
ganized us there, like regular troops: I belong to them, and I have a uni- 
form at home: if you saw me in it, you'd hardly know me; — three weeks 
ago we all met there, above 40,000 men, to be reviewed. We had all 
green jackets, (for every man must get one as well as he can,) with an 
inscription on the arm — King George and O'Connell. We have chosen 
our own officers; they drill us, and we can march and wheel already like 
the redcoats. We had no arms to be sure, but they could be had too if 
O'Connell chose. We had flags, and whoever deserted them or got drunk, 
we threw into the water till he was sober again: but that very seldom 
happened. — They call us O'Connell's Militia." 

The Government has since prudently forbidden this military display; 

and my promising citizen-soldier was furious against Lord K , who 

had arrested all his tenants (little farmers who are as dependent on their 
lords as serfs) who were present at the review. " But," added he, "every 
hour that they sit in prison shall be paid by their tyrants, whom we had 
rather see dead than alive; — if they in Cork here were not such tame 
sheep! In Tipperary they would have settled his business long ago: 
O'Connell never comes here, even when it's his nearest way, for he can- 
not endure the sight of K . " 

This is the spirit of party every where at work! and so well informed 
is this nation of beggars as to the state of their affairs! 

The journey to Cahir was not very interesting. The road lies between 
two chains of mountains, the Galtees and the Knockmildovvn mountains; 
but as the wide plain between them affords little wood or variety of ob- 
jects, the view is not agreeable. My travelling companion pointed out 
the highest peak of the Galtees, where the most renowned sportsman* of 
the neighbourhood was buried with his dog and his gun. Not far from 
thence are subterranean caverns, of unfathomable extent, full "of stalac- 
tites. They are accessible only in the hottest weather; at all other sea- 
sons they are filled with water. 

In Cahir there is a beautiful park belonging to Lord Glengall, who fur- 
nished the London caricaturists and the public with so much amusement 
last year. At the entrance is an imposing ruined castle of King John's, 
on whose tower Lord Glengall's banner is now flying. At the other end 

* ' Sportsman' — • sport' — are as untranslatable as ' Gentleman.' It is by no means 
a mere hunter or shooter; but a man who follows all amusements of that and the 
cognate kinds, with ardour and address. Boxing 1 , horse-racing, duck-shooting, fox- 
hunting, cock-fighting, are all ' sport.' — Editoh. 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 403 

of the park is the contrast to this ruin, namely, a 'cottage orne^e,' in 
which the possessor resides when he is here. The situation of this cottage 
is so charming and so well chosen that it deserves a fuller description. 
The whole park, beginning with the town and King John's castle, con- 
sists of a long and narrow valley, with a river flowing through meadows. 
Along these, clumps of trees and little thickets are beautifully scattered, 
and a path leads on each side of the river. The mountain ridges which 
close the valley are completely clothed with wood, through which the 
paths are cut. Near the end of the park, which is about three miles long, 
the glen opens and discloses a beautiful view of the higher Galtees. But 
before you reach this point there is a long isolated hill, directly in the 
middle of the valley, rising from the meadow-land. On this side is built 
the cottage, more than two-thirds hidden by the wood which clothes the 
whole hill. Within this wood is situated the ' pleasure-ground' and gar- 
dens of various sorts, with flowery walks which command the loveliest 
views of the valley on either side. Several ruins of castles and monaste- 
ries are visible on the distant mountains; but in the immediate neighbour- 
hood all is repose, rural quiet, and the gay beauty of flowers even in 
winter; 

On my return to dinner, the landlord told me, as a great piece of news, 
that the carriage and servants of a foreign prince had been waiting for 
him in Cashel for the last fortnight; but that he was gone on a secret 
journey to O'Connell, and that the whole country was in a stir and won- 
derment about it. Many thought he was sent by the King of France, with 
secret propositions to O'Connell; some had actually seen him in Limerick, 
and maintained that he was a son of Napoleon. 

While my host was uttering this and more nonsense of the like kind, 
not suspecting that he was talking to the ' personage' himself, who had 
just dismounted from a car; he announced that the second car, (the only 
carriage to be got,) was ready, and waited my orders. I set out, and had 
soon an opportunity of making fresh philosophical observations on the 
power of habit in the beast that drew me. He was a very good and wil- 
ling animal; but as soon as he reached the place where for fifteen 
years he had been accustomed to be led to water, he suddenly stopped, 
and fire would not have moved him till he had had his drink. After that 
he needed no driving; but he repeated the same manoeuvre when we 
met a return car, on which occasions it is usual to stop and exchange 
information. As if suddenly struck lame, he drew up and stood stock 
still; as soon as the drivers had shaken hands over his back he in- 
stantly went on of his own accord. This is really the great secret in the 
education of man or beast, — habit, ' voila tout.' The Chinese are a glo- 
rious example of this. I remember that once in London, the well-known 
ambassador of a great nation tried at great length to convince me that 
the Chinese form of government was the best and most efficient, be- 
cause there every thing remained unaltered: * C'est plus commode pour 
ceux qui regnent, il n'y a pas de doute.' 

About seven I reached Cashel, having passed the Suir, a river which is 
called the flower of Ireland, because the richest pastures and the most 
beautiful seats lie on its banks. I found a terrible tumult in the inn, — 
one of the liberal 'Clubs' were having a meeting and a dinner.* I had 

* Nothing important or solemn can go on in England without a dinner; be it reli- 
gious, political, literary, or of what kind it may. — Ed. 



404 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

hardly taken possession of my room, when the president, in propria per- 
sona, and a deputation, came to invite me to their dinner. I entreated 
them to excuse me, on the ground of the fatigue of my journey and a 
violent head-ache, but promised to come in at the dessert, for indeed I 
was curious to see what was going forward. The club was instituted with 
an admirable purpose; — it consisted of Catholics and Protestants, who 
proposed to unite their efforts to reconcile the parties, and to co-operate 
with all their might to obtain emancipation. When I entered, I found 
from eighty to a hundred persons sitting at a long table; they all stood 
up while the president led me to the top. I thanked them; upon which 
they drank my health, and I was again forced to reply. Innumerable 
other toasts followed, all accompanied by speeches. The eloquence of 
the speakers was not very remarkable, and the same common-places were 
served up over and over again in different words. In half an hour I seized 
a favourable moment to take my .leave. — Forgive me, for I was very tired. 
I have not heard any thing from you for a long time, and must wait for 
letters till I get to Dublin. Only be well, — that is the main thing for 
you; and don't cease to love me, for that is the main thing for me. 

Your faithful L — • . 



LETTER XXXVII. 

Cashel, Oct. 10th, 1828. 
Dear and kind Friend, 

The "Rock of Cashel," with its celebrated noble ruin is one of the 
greatest lions of Ireland, and was mentioned to me by Walter Scott him- 
self as the most worth visiting after the Abbey of Holy Cross. It is a rock 
standing isolated in the midst of the plain. It is odd enough, that in 
one of the distant mountains there is a cavity of just the same size as 
the rock: — according to the legend, the devil bit it out in a rage at losing 
a soul he was carrying off to hell. As he flew over Cashel he spit the bit 
out again. Upon this rock M'Cormack, king and archbishop of Cashel, 
built a castle and a chapel, which are both in remarkable preservation. 
In the twelfth century, I think, Donald O'Brien added the church and 
abbey. The whole forms a most magnificent ruin, in which all the de- 
tails of Saxon architecture may be studied in the most interesting man- 
ner. This has been greatly facilitated by the labours of the son-in-law 
of the present archbishop, Dr. Cotton, who some months ago had M'Cor- 
mack's chapel entirely cleared of the accumulations of dirt and rubbish, 
and has, at considerable expense, rendered the whole ruin accessible. 
Nothing can be more strange, — I might say, more barbarically elegant, — 
than these grotesque, fantastic, but often admirably executed ornaments. 
Many sarcophagi and monuments found buried under rubbish or earth, 
suggests curious and interesting speculations. One is tempted to think 
that the frightful images, like Indian idols, must have belonged to some 
earlier religion, did we not know how slowly Paganism gave way to 
Christianity, how obstinately it still lingers. I have in my possession a 
little bell, which one of my ancestors brought with him from the prisons 
of the Inquisition, and on which the Virgin is surrounded with apes in- 
stead of angels, some playing the violin, while others are making somer- 
sets in the clouds ! 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 405 

I examined the whole ruin minutely, and climbed to the highest acces- 
sible point just as the sun was setting over the Devil's Bite. The arch- 
bishop had had the kindness to send his librarian to show me the ruin. 
From this gentleman I learned that the celebrated and often cited Psalter, 
written in the Irish language, which is mentioned in every Traveller's 
Guide as the standing wonder of Cashel, is a mere fable; at least, that 
no such thing was ever known to exist here. This interested me little; 
but I was really alarmed at hearing that the Catholics entertain the idea 
of restoring and rebuilding the church, if they could get possession of the 
ground. Heaven preserve the sacred ruin from their pious designs! 

On a plain in front of the church stands an extremely ancient and mu- 
tilated statue of St. Patrick, on a pedestal of granite. Near this was for- 
merly to be seen the coronation-seat, said to have been brought from Por- 
tugal hither, and afterwards sent to the coronation of the Scottish king, 
Fergus, at Scone, whence Edward I. brought it to Westminster-abbey, 
where it now is. 

At the foot of the Rock of Cashel stand the very curious ruins of Hore 
Abbey, which, it is asserted, were formerly connected with the castle by 
subterranean passages. The beautiful proportions and perfect ornaments 
of a great window are particularly striking. 

October 11th. 

One of the gentlemen whose acquaintance I made yesterday, a man of 
good family and engaging manners, offered me his horse to visit the ruins 
of the Abbey of Athassil, and the park and seat of the wealthy Eirl of 
Llandatf. The excellent hunters soon carried us to the spot: the object, 
however, was not equal to my expectations. The abbey is certainly a 
beautiful and extensive ruin; but its situation, in a bog surrounded by 
ploughed fields without tree or shrub, is so unfavourable as to deprive it 
of all picturesque effect. Lord Llandaff's park is likewise of great ex- 
tent, two thousand eight hundred acres, but has no distinguishing beau- 
ties. The trees are not fine, water almost entirely wanting, and the mo- 
dern Gothic house, painted light blue, appear to me hideous. The pos- 
sessor is a still handsome and interesting man of seventy, who has the 
great, and in Ireland the rare merit of residing on his property. We 
found a person who is distinguished in society by the foreign polish of his 
manners, in the character of a plain farmer, in marsh-boots and water- 
proof cloak, standing in the rain directing his labourers. This pleased 
me greatly, for reasons you can guess. 

On our return, Captain S gave me a great many interesting details 

respecting the really atrocious and crying injustice and oppression under 
which the Irish Catholics labour: it is more intolerable than that which 
the Greeks suffer from their Turkish masters. The Catholics are not al- 
lowed to call their places of worship churches, only chapels; they must 
have no bells in them, — things inconsiderable in themselves, but degrad- 
ing and insulting in their intent. No Catholic can, as you know, sit in 
Parliament, nor be general in the army, minister of state, judge, &c* 
Their priests cannot perform the ceremony of marriage, in cases where 
one party is Protestant, and their titles are not recognised by the law. 
The most scandalous thing however is, that the Catholics are forced to 
pay enormous sums to the Protestant clergy, while they have entirely to 

* These disabilities have, as is universally known, been since removed. — Editor. 



406 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

maintain their own, of whom the state takes no notice. This is manifestly 
one great cause of the incredible poverty of the people. How intolerable 
must it appear in a country like Ireland, where more than two-thirds of 
the whole population are most zealously devoted to the Catholic religion! 
In the South the proportion is much larger. In the county of Tipperary 
there are about 400,000 Catholics, and only 10,000 Protestants: never- 
theless, the Protestant clergy costs the inhabitants the following sums 
yearly: 

The Archbishop - - -. - - - - - - £25,000 

The Dean 4,000 

For about 50 parishes, on an average, each >■ 1,500 

which charge, of course, falls mainly on the Catholics. Most of the par- 
sous do not even live in Ireland, but put some poor devil with a salary of 
£50 or £60 a year to perform their duties: these are the far-famed cu- 
rates: the duties are indeed soon performed, as there are parishes which, 
do not contain more than ten Protestants; and, indeed, there is one in 
this neighbourhood in which not one is to be found; and not even a 
church, — only an old ruin, in which the 'farce' of divine worship is once 
a year acted to empty walls, during which a Catholic, hired for the oc- 
casion, performs the office of clerk J Meanwhile, the clergy are year after 
year wearing away the pavement of London and Paris, and living as un- 
spiritual a life as possible. I lately read in an English newspaper, that a 
clergyman in Boulogne had lost a large sum -at play; that an affair had 
ensued in which he had shot his antagonist, and had been obliged imme- 
diately to quit the place and return to his living. Even the higher clergy, 
who must at least reside at certain stated periods in their episcopal and 
archiepiscopal sees, suffer none of their ill-gotten gains, (for what else 
can money so acquired be called?) to return back again to the poor peo- 
ple from whom, they have wrung it, but save all they can, that they may 
enrich their families. 

Can anybody wonder that such institutions have frequently goaded 
the unhappy people to despair and rebellion? and yet at every struggle 
their chains are riveted tighter, and eat more deeply into the bleeding 
flesh. Wherever you see a beautiful estate and fertile land, if you ask 
who is the proprietor, you are generally told " It is forfeited land," once 
belonging to Catholics, now to Protestants. O'Connell told me, that not 
long ago a law was in force, ordaining that no Catholic should hold land- 
ed property in Ireland; and if a Protestant could prove before a court of 
justice that this was in any instance the case, the .property was taken 
from the Catholic and given to him: the only remedy lay in a feigned 
conversion. But in spite of this bounty on hypocrisy and deceit, land to 
the value of millions of pounds was transferred into the hands of Protes- 
tants by this atrocious process. Is it not marvellous that Protestants, 
who in a barbarous age severed themselves from the Romish church on 
account of her intolerance and rapacity, should now, in an enlightened 
one, cherish the very same vices, — thus incurring a far greater compara- 
tive load of guilt than they would have had to bear before. Will this 
monstrosity, the offspring of despotism and hypocrisy, which has so long 
been nourished by the tears and blood of the world, never be destroyed 
by more enlightened generations! If ever it is, they will look back upon 
us with the same sort of pity as we do upon the darkness of the middle 
ages. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 407 

In the afternoon I visited the Catholic dean, an extremely agreeable 
man, who lived a long time on the continent, and was chaplain to the late 
Pope. His frank and enlightened conversation excited my surprise; for 
we are accustomed to think that everv Catholic must of necessity be a 
superstitious bigot. Among other things, he said to me, " Believe me, 
this country is devoted to misfortune. We have scarcely such a thing as 
a Christian among us: Catholics and Protestants have one common reli- 
gion, — that of hatred." 

Some time afterwards, Captain S brought me the latest newspaper, 

in which my visit to the meeting was mentioned: the few words 1 said 
there, and the other speeches, were dressed up with the accustomed char- 
latanerie, and filled three or four columns of the paper. To give you a 
specimen of this 'genre,' and at the same time to cut a figure in your 
eyes by my eloquence, I translate the beginning of the article, in which 
I am puffed in the same style as that in which a quack doctor sets forth 
the unparalleled virtues of his pills, or a horse-dealer those of his horses: — 
listen. 

" As soon as the arrival of the * * * * was known, the president, ac- 
companied by a deputation, repaired to his apartment, to invite him to 
honour our feast with his presence. Shortly afterwards, the * * * * en- 
tered the room. His air is 'commanding and graceful.' He wore mous- 
taches, and although very pale, his countenance is 'exceedingly pleasing 
and expressive.' He took his seat at the upper end of the table, and, 
bowing to the company, spoke distinctly and ' with proper emphasis,' 
though with a foreign accent, the following words: — 'Gentlemen, — Al- 
though ill and very tired, I feel myself too much flattered by your kind 
invitation not to accept it with thanks, and to express to you personally 
the lively interest I take in your struggles on behalf of your country. May 
God bless this beautiful and richly-gifted land! which offers to every fo- 
reigner such manifold enjoyments; but in which I, especially, have reason 
to acknowledge with the deepest gratitude, the kindness and hospitality 
which I have every where experienced. May Heaven, I repeat, bless this 
sorely-tried country, and every true Irishman, whether Catholic or Pro- 
testant, who desires the welfare not of any exclusive sect or party, but of 
Ireland! — a welfare that can be attained only by peace, forbearance, and 
* civil and religious liberty,' (a standing phrase in these islands.) Gen- 
tlemen, fill your glasses and allow me to give you a toast: — ' The King, 
and Erin go bragh!' (This is the old Irish motto, which is on the medal 
of the order of the Liberator, and signifies 'Erin for ever!') 

"The President: — 'Gentlemen, I beg you to participate in my feel- 
ings, and to receive the expression of them from me. May our 'illustrious 
guest,' to whose health we now fill our glasses, — if ever he return among 
us, — find us in the enjoyment of equal laws and equal privileges, and in 
the possession of that internal tranquillity which alone we have combined 
to obtain. Three times three: — The ' * * * *.' " I repeated my thanks 
for the honour done me, and added, " That nothing could make me hap- 
pier than to be an eye-witness of the fulfilment of their and my wishes, in 
a country which I loved as my own, and quitted with extreme regret." 

Now, dear Julia, what do you think of me? Cannot I string common- 
places as well as another upon occasion? What is no common-place, though 
reiterated at the end of every one of my letters, is, the assurance of the 
tender affection with which I am, and ever shall be, 

Your Friend L , 



40S LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



LETTER XXXVIII. 

Cashel, Oct. 12//i, 1828. 
Dearest Friend, 

Why do I like so much to write to you? Certainly because it gives you 
pleasure to hear from me from afar: but also, because you understand me, 
which nobody else does. This alone would suffice to enchain me to you 
for ever, for I live in the world, but with you alone, — as much alone, as 
if we were on a desert island. Thousands of beings swarm around me, 
but I can speak only with you. If I attempt it with others, my habit and 
disposition, always to speak the truth, often cost me dear; or I blunder 
in some way or other. Worldly wisdom is as decidedly and unattainably 
denied to my nature, as to the swan — who in winter waddles clumsily 
across the frozen lake before your window — the power of running races 
with the sledges that glide over it. However, his time too comes, when 
he cleaves his own free and beautiful element, or sails through the blue 
aether. Then he is himself again. 

But back to Cashel. — I used my good friend's horses, which daily stand 
at my disposal, for a second excursion to the ruins of Holy Cross, six 
miles off, the worthy rival of the Devil's Rock. We amused ourselves 
by riding across the countiy, and leaping some stone enclosures; and 
reached a height from which 'The Rock,' as it is here briefly called, pre- 
sents the most imposing aspect. The circle of distant blue mountains 
encircling the rock, which stands alone in the midst of the fruitful plain; 
the castle, abbey, and cathedral, — which, forming a majestic group, look 
down from the summit, and in si-lent and sublime language relate the his- 
tory of successive ages; lastly, the town at its foot, so wretched, although 
the seat of two archbishops, (a Protestant and a Catholic,) and which also 
tells its own mute but intelligible tale concerning the present times,— 
combine to awaken varied and contradictory emotions. 

Holy Cross is of a totally different character. — Cashel stands in solitary 
grandeur, all rock and stone, barren and black, with only here and there 
a straggling ivy-branch creeping feebly through a crevice. Holy Cross, 
on the contrary, lies in a valley on the banks of the Suir, buried in copse- 
wood, and clothed with ivy of such luxuriant growth that hardly a wall 
can be seen: and even the lofty cross, the last which still remains stand- 
ing,* is so enwreathed with it, that it seems as if it clung fondly to shel- 
ter it from every profane touch. The interior is magnificent, and con- 
tains the beautiful monument of Donough O'Brien, king of Limerick, who 
founded this abbey in the twelfth century; and a canopy, exquisitely 
carved in stone, under which repose the ashes of the abbots, — both in per- 
fect preservation. The view from the tower is beautiful. You are very 
near the Devil's Bite, whose grotesque form is too striking not to have 
furnished matter for legends to the Irish, who have a story ready fitted 
to every extraordinary natural object. 

We hastened back sooner than I wished, in consequence of an invita- 

* A piece of the true cross was kept here, and gave its name to the monastery. 
Every separate building, was, for this reason, ornamented with a lofty cross of stone, 
of which only one is preserved. — Editor. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 409 

tion I had received from the Catholic dean to meet the archbishop and 
sixteen other clergymen at dinner: no layman but myself was invited. 
The table did honour to a chaplain of the Holy Father. *« You never 
were at a dinner, I dare say," said the archbishop to me, " at which all 
the guests were clerical." "Yes, indeed, my lord," replied I; "and 
what is more, I myself was a sort of bishop a little while ago." "How 

is that possible?" said he, surprised. 1 explained to him, that I * 

* * * * * * * # * * 

"We are, therefore," said I, "eighteen priests here assembed; and I 
can assure you, that I make no distinction between Catholics and Pro- 
testants; — that I see in both only Christians." 

The conversation then turned on religious subjects, and was in a per- 
fectly free and impartial spirit. Never did I perceive the least trace of 
bigotry or of the disgusting affectation of puritanical rigour. At the 
dessert, several sang their national songs, some of which had no pre- 
tension to sanctity. As the one who sat next me remarked some little 
surprise on my countenance, he said in my ear, " Here we forget the 
foreign * * * *, the archbishop, and the priest, — at table, we are only 
gentlemen, and meet to enjoy ourselves." This man was the undisputed 
descendant of an Irish royal line; and although no trace of it remained 
about him, he was not the less proud of it. " I have a strange abode for 
a clergyman," said he; "if ever you visit Ireland again, I hope you will 
allow me the pleasure of doing the honours of it to you. It lies imme- 
diately under the Devil's Bite, and a finer view than this same Bite com- 
mands does not exist in all Ireland." He afterwards remarked, that to 
be a Catholic in this country is almost a proof of noble blood: as only 
the new families are Protestant, the Catholics must of necessity be the 
old ones; for since the reformation they have made no proselytes. 

The melodies which were sung had a striking resemblance to those 
of the Wendish nations. This is one of the many features of similarity 
which strike me between those nations and the Irish. Both manufacture, 
and have an exclusive taste for, spirit distilled from corn; both live al- 
most entirely on potatoes; both have the bagpipe; both are passionate lo- 
vers of singing and dancing, and yet their national airs are of a melan- 
choly character; both are oppressed by a foreign nation, and speak a gra- 
dually expiring language, which is rich and poetical, though possessed of 
no literature; both honour the descendants of their ancient princes, and 
cherish the principle that what is not renounced is not utterly lost; both 
are superstitious, cunning, and greatly given to exaggeration; rebellious 
where they can, but somewhat cringing to decided and established 
power; both like to go ragged, even when they have the means of dressing 
better; and lastly, spite of their miserable living, both are capable of 
great exertion, though they prefer indolence and loitering; and both alike 
enjoy a fertile soil, which the Wendish phrase calls " the roast meat of 
poor people." The better qualities which distinguish the Irish are theirs 
alone. 

I took advantage of the acquaintance I made to-day, to gain more in- 
formation respecting the actual proportion in number between Catholics 
and Protestants. I found all I had heard fully confirmed, and have 
gained some further details: among others, the official list of a part of the 
present parishes and livings in the diocese of Cashel, which is too remark- 
able not to send it to you, though the matter is somewhat dry, and seems 
almost too pedantic for our correspondence. 

52 



Protestants. 


250^1 




700 




82 




76 


t5 
<u 


514 




25 


o 


400 


-s 


— 


b 


80 


« 


120 


"JJ 


12 


««5 


90 




30j 





410 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Catholics. 

Thurleshas - - - 12,000 

Cashel .... 11,000 

Clonoughty ... 5,142 

Cappavvhyte - - - - 2,800 

Killenaule - - - 7,040 

Boherlahan - 5,000 

Feathard - - - - 7,600 - 

Kilcummin - 2,400 

Mickarty - • - - 7,000 

Golden - - - - 4,000 

Anacarty .... 4,000 

Doniskeath .... 5,700 

New Erin - - - 4,500 

In thirteen districts, 78,182 Catholics and 2,379 Protestants. 

Each of these districts has only one Catholic priest, but often four or 
five Protestant clergymen; so that, on an average, there are scarcely 
twenty persons to each Protestant congregation. Kilcummin is the 
place I mentioned to you where there is not a single parishioner, and 
the service, which according to law must be performed once a year, 
is enacted in the ruin with the help of a Catholic clerk. In another, 
called Tollamane, the same farce takes place. But not a whit the less 
must the non-attending parishioners pay the uttermost farthing of their 
tithes and other dues; and no claims are so bitterly enforced as those 
of this Christian church: — there is no pity, at least none for Catholics. 
A man who cannot pay the rent of the church-land he farms, or his tithes 
to the parson, inevitably sees his cow and his pig sold, (furniture, bed, 
&c. he has long lost,) and himself, his wife, and probably a dozen chil- 
dren, ('car rien n'engendre comme les pommes de terre et la misere,') 
thrust out into the road, where he is left to the mercy of that Providence 
who feeds the fowls of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. * Quelle 
excellente chose qu'une religion d'etat!' So long as such exist, and every 
individual is not permitted, as in the United States, to worship God in 
his own way, without any civil disability or loss, — so long the age of 
barbarism has not ceased. The time must come when in the state, as in 
nature, laws alone must rule. Religion will then be lef to her appro- 
priate functions: she will console us in misfortune, and heighten our 
J Measures; but she will cease to wield the sceptre or the sword. The 
aws alone should employ inflexible restraint; opinion should enjoy un- 
bounded freedom. The civilized portion of mankind have a right to 
demand this at the stage to which they have attained, and to which 
they have fought their way through so much suffering and blood. What 
frantic folly, to want to prescribe to men what is to become of them after 
death, or what they shall believe about it! It is bad enough that here on 
earth the best institutions, the wisest laws, must ever be defective; — let 
the invisible future at least shape itself out to every mind according 
to that mind's power and comprehension! And yet have great and wise 
and good men thought themselves justified in exercising this sort of des- 
potism. But such is human frailty! the same individual will prove him- 
self sublime in eleven things, and in the twelfth think and act like an 
idiot. 

"While Cardinal Richelieu afforded to all succeeding ages the model of 
a great and sagacious minister, his chief solicitude was to be thought a 
good poet; and he tortured himself to write wretched tragedies, which 
after his death were waste paper. The great Louis, who might be called 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 411 

the absolute king 'par excellence,' seriously exclaimed after the battle 
of Malplaquet, « Et Dieu, a-t-il done oublie ce que j'ai fait pour lui ?' 
Cromwell, at once an enthusiast and the most audacious and most cun- 
ning of dissemblers, after heaping murder on murder and violence on 
violence, found his conscience tranquillized, when in answer to his in- 
terrogatories a clergyman assured him, that a man who had once felt 
assured of the motions of grace within him, must be eternally blessed, 
let him have done what he would. " Then I am saved, " cried the Pro- 
tector joyfully, " for I know to a certainty that once, at least, I felt 
myself in a state of grace." Such are men ! and therefore is it that human 
authority will never have weight with me, when it is not confirmed by 
my own judgment, exercised to the best of my power after mature reflec- 
tion. Nay, were even all mankind opposed to me, it could not alter an 
opinion so formed. Thank God! we are all individual minds, and not 
sheep who must follow one leader. And what is universal opinion? One 
is tempted to think it is only another name for universal error, so fre- 
quently does it alter. It seems to depend only on time and place. If 
you are born in Constantinople you swear by Mahomet; in the rest of 
Europe by Moses or Christ; in India, by Brama. Had you come into 
the world a subject of Augustus, you would have been a Pagan. In the 
Middle Ages you would have advocated fist-law (Faust-recht;) and now 
you clamour for the liberty of the press, as the one thing without which 
it is impossible to exist.* You yourself, in the course of your short life, — 
how different is your being! how different your modes of thinking, as a 
child, as a youth, as an old man! Herder was right when he said, "No 
two drops of water are alike, — and yet you would give to all mankind 
the same belief!" We might add, No atom remains unchanged, and you 
would bid the human mind stand still! 

Before the archbishop retired, he said to me in a most obliging manner, 
" You are, as you tell us, a bishop, consequently you owe obedience to 
the archbishop. I employ this my authority to command you to dine 
here to-morrow with your colleague the Bishop of Limerick, whom we 
expect to-day; — I must hear of no excuse." 1 answered, taking up the 
jest, " I readily confess that it does not beseem me to withstand the dis- 
cipline of the Church, and Your Gracet and the Dean know so well how 
to sweeten obedience, that I submit the more willingly." 

I passed the evening in the society of the * * *. I have seldom found 
Protestant clergymen so frank and sincere as these Catholics. We came 
to the conclusion, that we must either receive, blindly the hereditary faith 
the Church prescribes; or, if this be not in our power, from our own religi- 
ous system as the result of individual thoughts and individual feelings, — 
which may rightly be called the religion of philosophers. The * * * 
spoke French most fluently, I therefore quote his own words: "Heureu- 
sement on peut en quelque sorte combiner l'un et 1 'autre; car, au bout 
du compte, il faut une religion positive au peuple." "Et dites surtout," 

• A Moor, who was a vjery enlightened man for his country, and resided a long 

time in England, said to Captain L , "I should not like to serve so powerless 

a monarch as the King of England. How different a feeling it gives one to be the 
servant of a sovereign who is the image of God's omnipotence on .earth, at whose 
nod a thousand heads must fly like chaff before the wind!"—' 11 ne faut done pas 
disputer des gouts.' . 

f« Your Grace' is the title of Protestant archbishops in England, and is given by 
all well-bred people, by courtesy, also to the Catholic archbishops, although the 
English law does not recognise their rank. 



412 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

replied I, "qu'il en faut une aux rois et aux pretres; car aux uns elle 
fournit le ' par la grace de Dieu, et aux autres, de la puissance, des hon- 
neurs, et des richesses; le peuple se contenterait, peut-etre, de bonnes 
lois et d'un gouvernement libre." "Ah," interrupted he, "you think 
like Voltaire, 

"Les pretres ne sont pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense, 
Et sa credulite fait toute notre science." 

"Ma foi," said I, "si tous les pretres vous l-essemblaient je penserais 
bien autrement." 

October, 13th: Evening. 
I was unfortunately unable to keep my word with my friendly Amphi- 
tryon. A ' megrim' confined me all day to my bed. The archbishop sent 
me word that he would cure me; and, if I would but bring firm faith, 
would be sure to drive away the headache-fiend by a well-applied exor- 
cism. I was, however, obliged to reply, that this devil was one of the 
most tractable, and that he respected no one but Nature, who sends and 
recalls him at her pleasure, which, alas! is seldom in less than four-and- 
twenty hours. I must therefore cut oft' even you, dearest Julia, with a 
few words. 

October 14th. 

* Apres la pluie le soleil!' This day has indemnified me for the last. I 
was on horseback by six o'clock, on my way to breakfast at Captain 
S .'s country-house, where the sportsmen were to rendezvous for a 
hare-hunt. I found six or seven sturdy squires assembled: they do not 
think much, but their life is all the more gay and careless. After we had 
eaten and drank the most heterogeneous things, — coffee, tea, whiskey, 
wine, eggs, beef-steaks, honey, mutton-kidneys, cakes, and bread and 
butter, one after another, — the company seated themselves on two large 
cars, and took the direction of the Galtee mountains; where, at a distance 
of about eight miles, the hounds and horses were waiting for us. The 
weather was fine, and the ride very pleasant, along a ridge of hills com- 
manding a full view of the fruitful plain, enclosed by mountains and richly 
varied by a multitude of gentlemen's seats and ruins which are scattered 
over the whole level country. I enjoyed these beauties, as usual, alone; 
my companions had only dogs and horses in their heads. A spot was 
pointed out to me where a strange phenomenon took place ten years ago. 
A bog which lay at a considerable elevation, forced up probably by sub- 
terranean springs, was completely loosened from its bottom, and travelled 
on in a mass, sixteen feet high and three or four acres in extent. It moved 
on in a continual zigzag, according to the nature of the objects it en- 
countered; and thus passed over a distance of nine miles till it reached 
the nearest river, into which it slowly discharged itself, causing an over- 
flow of the waters. The rate of its progress was about three miles an hour. 
It laid waste every thing in its course. Houses were levelled with the 
earth at its touch; trees torn up at once by the roots; the fields completely 
covered, and the valleys filled with bog. An immense multitude had as- 
sembled at the end of its course, without the power of offering the slightest 
resistance to the progress of this awful and majestic phenomenon. 

On our arrival at the appointed place of meeting, the horses were there, 
but no dogs. There were, however, a great many gentlemen, and instead 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 41 S 

of hunting hares we now all traversed the fields in every direction in 
search of the stray hounds. The sort of riding on these occasions is a 
thing of which people in our country can form no idea. Although most 
of the fields are enclosed by stone hedges from three to six feet high, and 
either piled loosely together or regularly cemented, and some of them 
edged by ditches; or strong walls of earth and stones pointed at the top, 
from five to seven feet high, with a ditch on one, sometimes on both sides; — 
all this is not admitted as any pretext whatever for the riders to deviate 
from a straight line. If I mistake not, I have already described to you 
how wonderfully the horses here leap; the sagacity is also admirable with 
which they distinguish a loose hedge from a firm one; one recently thrown 
up, from one hardened by time. The loose ones they spring over at one 
leap, — 'clear them,' according to the technical expression; but they take 
the firm ones more easily, making a sort of halt at the top. All this takes 
place equally well in a full gallop, or, with the utmost coolness, at a foot 
pace, or with a very short run. Some gentlemen fell, but were only 
laughed at; for a man who does not break his neck on the spot must look 
for no pity, but on the contrary, ridicule. Others dismounted at very bad 
places, and their docile steeds leaped without them, and then stood still, 
grazing while their riders climbed over. I can assure you I very often 

thought I should be compelled to follow their example; but Captain S , 

who knew the excellent horse on which he had mounted me, and was al- 
ways by my side, encouraged me to trust with perfect security to the ad- 
mirable creature; so that at the end of the day I had acquired a very con- 
siderable reputation even among 'fox-hunters.' Certainly it is only in 
Ireland one sees all that horses are capable of; the English are far behind 
them in this respect. Wherever a man could get through, my horse found 
means to do so in one way or other, leaping, crawling, or scrambling. 
Even in swampy places where he sank up to his girths, he laboured 
through without the least hurry or agitation, where a more lively and 
timorous horse, though equally strong, would certainly never have made 
his way. Such a horse on a field of battle would be beyond all price: but 
only very early and perfect training, joined to the excellence of the breed, 
can produce such an one. Experience shows that a peculiar bent of edu- 
cation, continued through centuries, ends in rendering the superinduced 
qualities natural even in animals. I saw pointers in England, which with- 
out any training, stood still and pointed as decidedly the first time they 
were taken out shooting, as if the} 1 " had been ever so carefully trained. 

The price of these admirable horses was extremely reasonable ten years 
ago, but since the English have begun to buy them for hunting, it is greatly 
raised, and an Irish hunter of the quality of the one I rode to-day, would 
fetch from a hundred and fifty to two hundred guineas. At the Galway 

races I saw a celebrated blood-hunter, for which Lord CI had given 

the latter sum. He had won every ' steeple-chase' he had ever run; was 
as light as he was powerful, swift as the wind, a child could manage him, 
and no hedge was too high, no ditch too wide for him. 

At length we found the dogs: the men who had the care of them having 
got completely drunk. Our hunt did not end till the approach of twi- 
light. It was become excessively cold, and the flickering fire, with the 
table spread before it, shone most agreeably upon us on our arrival 

at Captain S 's house. A genuine sportsman's and bachelor's feast 

followed. There was no attempt at show or elegance. Glasses, dishes, 
and all the furniture of the table, were of every variety of form and date: 
one man drank his wine out of a liqueur glass, another out of a champagne 



414 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

glass, the more thirsty out of tumblers. One ate with his great-grand- 
father's knife and fork, his neighbour with a new green-handled one 
which the servant had just bought at Cashel fair. There were as many 
dogs as guests in the room: every man waited on himself; and the meats 
and potables were pushed on the table in abundance by an old woman 
and a heavy-fisted groom. The fare was by no means to be despised, 
nor the wine either, nor the potheen clandestinely distilled in the moun- 
tains, which I here fasted for the first time genuine and unadulterated. 
For sweetening a pudding, two large lumps of sugar were handed about, 
and we rubbed them together as the savages do sticks for kindling the 
fire. That the drinking was on a vast and unlimited scale you may 
safely presume: but though many at last could not speak very articulately, 
yet no one attempted any thing indecorous or ill-bred; and the few who 
were much excited, enhanced the merriment by many a 'bon mot' or 
droll story. 

I am indebted for the great cordiality, I might say enthusiasm, with 
which I am received here, to my visit to the 'Man of the People,' with 
whom the curious believe me to be in God-knows-what connection. I am 
greeted with hurrahs in every village I ride through; and in Cashel, the 
market-place, in which my inn stands, is daily filled with people, who 
congregate at an early hour, and cheer me every time I go out. Many 
press forward and ask leave to shake my hand, (a no very gentle opera- 
tion,) and are quite happy when they have accomplished this. 

We rose from table very late. I was packed into my host's car with 
another gentleman, and set off for Cashel through an icy fog. Every in- 
dividual ran out to my assistance. One would draw a pair of furred 
gloves on my hands; another lent me a cloak; a third tied a handker- 
chief round my neck; — every man insisted on doing me some little ser- 
vice: and with many a ' God bless his Highness!' I was at length suffered 
to depart. The gentleman with me, Mr. O'R — , was the most original, 
and the most drunk of any. Equally bent on doing me some kindness, 
he invariably made the matter worse than he found it. He unfastened 
my cloak, in trying to fasten it; tore off my handkerchief, instead of 
tying it; and fell upon me, in his efforts to make room. His poetical 
humour displayed itself as characteristically when we reached the Rock 
of Cashel. It was dreadfully cold, and the cloudless firmament twinkled 
and glittered as if bestrewn with diamonds. Between the road and the 
rock, however, a thick mist lay along the earth, and covered the whole 
surrounding country as with a veil, though it did not rise higher than to 
the foot of the ruin. Its base was invisible, and it appeared as if it stood 
built on a cloud in the blue sether, and in the midst of the stars. I had been 
admiring this striking night-scene some time, when my neighbour, whom 
I thought asleep, suddenly cried aloud, *' Ah, there is my glorious rock! 
look, how grand! and above all, the sacred place where all my ancestors 
repose, and where I too shall lie in peace!" After a pause he tried in a 
fit of greater ecstasy to stand up, which but for me would probably have 
ended in his falling from the carriage. As soon as he was firm on his 
legs, he took off' his hat reverently, and with a sort of devotion, at once 
affecting and burlesque, called out with tears in his eyes, " God bless 
Almighty God, and glory to him!" Notwithstanding the nonsense, I was 
touched by the feeling which broke through it, and in this at least I sym- 
pathized with my whole soul. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 415 

October 15 th. 

Lord H , whom I knew in London, invited me to spend someday9 

at his beautiful residence in this neighbourhood. This invitation I was 
obliged to refuse, but went to-day to dine with him. The well-kept 
pleasure-ground, and the excavation of a hollow for a little lake, recalled 
to me but too strongly the castle where you, my dear! are now living, to 
be able to look at it without emotion. When shall we see each other 
again! when shall we breakfast under the three lime-trees with the swans 
who so trustingly fed out of our hands, while your tame doves picked up 
the crumbs at our feet, and the little coco, surprised and jealous, looked 
at the audacious birds with his wise eyes, — a picture at which the ' blase"* 
man of the world shrugs his shoulders contemptuously, but which touches 
our hearts in all its native simplicity. 

Lord H is not one of those Irish nobles who withdraw the whole 

of their revenues from their country: he sometimes resides there: but he 
understands his interest so ill, that instead of placing himself at the head 
of the people, he sets himself in opposition to them. The natural conse- 
quence ensues: Lord Llandall, though a Protestant, is beloved:— Lord 

H is hated, though personally he does not appear to me to deserve 

it. 1 heard much of his excessive cruelties towards the Catholics, and I 
was indeed witness to his violent temper on this subject. I think, how- 
ever, that in this case, as in so many others, the mere change of one's 
own point of view alters all the relations of things. This is a grand rule 
of the practical philosophy of life, and the effect is certain: for the objects 
are only raw material matter; every thing depends on the manner in 
which the individual understands and shapes them. How many situa- 
tions may thus be transformed from black into rose-coloured, as soon as 
one resolutely takes off the black spectacles, or puts on the rose-coloured 
ones. With what spectacles will you read my letter? — I hear your answer, 
and kiss you for it. 

Heaven guard you, and keep you in this mind! 

Your devoted L — ■ . 



LETTER XXXIX. 

Ban , October 17 th, 1828. 

Beloved Julia, 

Since yesterday I have been an inhabitant of a pretty Gothic cottage 
at the foot of a mountain. From one of my windows I see fertile fields: 
from the other, wood, lake, and rocks. The master of the house is Mr. 

O'R 's brother, who possesses besides this charming residence a very 

pretty wife, to whom I pay my court a little, for the gentlemen drink and 
hunt too much for my taste. The family estate would have naturally de- 
volved on my whimsical friend; but as he was always rather a wild bird, 
who from his boyhood had a strong propensity for whiskey-punch and a 
joyous life, his father, having the disposal of it, left it to his youngest son. 
The brothers are nevertheless the best possible friends; and the light- 
hearted kindly nature of the eldest finds no wormwood in the wine which 
he drinks at his brother's table; while on the other side, the younger re- 
spects the poverty of his kind-hearted and amusing elder, (who gets regu- 
larly drunk every evening,) and lets him want for nothing. Such a con- 
nexion does honour to both, the more, because at the father's death the 



416 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

lawyers were of opinion that the will might have been set aside. Both 
have doubtless acted with as much wisdom as kindness to leave it uncon- 
tested, and thus keep the oyster for themselves. 

We passed the whole day in rambling about these magnificent moun- 
tain-paths. Others went out snipe-shooting, after which we sat at the 
dinner table till 2 o'clock in the morning. Very soon after the dessert 
was served, the ladies, as usual, left us: and now the drinking began in 
earnest. Coffee was brought very late; on the heels of which followed 
a stimulating ' souper' of ' devils' of all sorts,* raw oysters and pickles. 
This formed the prelude to potheen punch, of which several drank from 
twelve to sixteen large tumblers, whilst O'R kept the whole company 
4 in a roar of laughter' by his inexhaustible wit and mad tricks. Besides 
this, every man was forced to sing a song: I among the rest, a German 
one, of which nobody understood a word, but all were very politely de- 
lighted. At two, I retired; but all the others staid. As my chamber 
•was unfortunately directly over them, it was long before I could sleep 
for their noise and laughter. 

October ISth. 

You will wonder at the somewhat coarse and low life I led here, and 
to say the truth I wonder at it myself; but it is 'genuine,' that is to 
say, perfectly natural to these people, and nothing assumed; and that 
has ever a charm of its own, at least for me. Besides, the lady of the 
house is really charming, lively and graceful as a French-woman, with a 
foot like a zephyr. 

This morning we hunted hares, and many a bold leap was taken. In 
the evening they produced the most celebrated piper of Ireland, Keans 
Fitzpatrick, called the King of the Pipers, having been honoured with the 
approbation of ' His most gracious Majesty King George the Fourth. ' In- 
deed, the melodies which the blind minstrel draws from his strange instru- 
ment are often as surprising as they are beautiful, and his skill is equal 
to his highly polished and noble air. These pipers, who are almost all 
blind, derive their origin from remote antiquity. They are gradually 
fading away, for all that is old must vanish from the earth. 

October 19th. 
In the course of the day we met two men of very suspicious appearance 
in a wood. My companion very cooly pointed them out to me as noto- 
rious robbers, who had managed, partly by cunning, partly by the general 
terror they inspired, to preserve their liberty; — another proof how defec- 
tive is the government and how entirely perverted are all the relations 
and sentiments of society; two things by which Ireland is specially cha- 
racterized. Both of these men, who called themselves farmers because 
they rented a little bit of potatoe-field were of a singularly striking and 
national aspect. The one, a slender man of about forty, handsome, with 
a wild but imposing physiognomy, was a highly picturesque figure, even 
in his rags. Contempt of all danger was impressed upon his noble brow; — 
indifference in all disgrace played scornfully about his audacious mouth. 
His history confirmed the language of his features. He wore three or 
four military medals, which he had gained in the wars in Spain and 

* These, as my departed friend often declared, were remarkably well prepared in 
Ireland. They consist of poultry boiled dry, with Cayenne pepper, or served with 
a most burning and pungent sauce. — Editor, (addressed to gourmands.) 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 417 

France. In consequence of repeated proofs of his remarkable courage he 
had been raised to the rank of a non-commissioned officer, from which his 
disorderly conduct soon caused him to be degraded: he had then served 
a second time, again distinguished himself, and again for the same rea- 
sons as before been disgraced, though not convicted of any capital of- 
fence. — He is now strongly suspected of being the leader of the band of 
robbers who infest the Galtees, and have committed several murders. 
His companion was in external appearance the complete reverse of him; 
he was, for an Irish farmer, unusually well clad, that is to say, in whole 
clothes; sixty years old, short and thick-set, and in his whole aspect 
almost like a Quaker. In his sanctified countenance, however, lurked 
such an expression of cunning and of pitiless determination, that he ap- 
peared to me much more terrible than the other. He was prosecuted two 
years ago for forging bank-notes; and was very nearly convicted, when he 
was rescued from the gallows by a dexterous lawyer to whom he entrusted 
his case. With tears cf gratitude he put fifty pounds into the hand of 
his deliverer, lamenting most pathetically that he could not requite him 
better. The advocate was satisfied with his success, and put the notes 
into his pocket-book. What was his indignation at finding that Paddy 
had paid him in the very notes from the consequences of the manufacture 
of which he had just saved him! When the Irish take a bad turn, (and 
the only wonder is that they do not all do so,) they are the most danger- 
ous people in the world; their most prominent qualities — courage, levity, 
and cunning, — are but too efficient in enabling them to dare every thing 
and to effect much. 

Oct. 2Ut. 
I had so often laid the hospitality of these worthy squires under con- 
tribution, that I was obliged ' en conscience' to make some return. I 
therefore invited them all to dine with me before my departure. In the 
morning I gave a cock-fight, ' car il faut hurler avec les loups;' then a 
concert of the great piper; then we had a ride; and lastly ' grand festin, 
grand chere, et bon feu.' During our ride we came to a spot at which a 
magistrate named Baker was shot three years ago. He was a man exactly 
in the stile of the Bailiffs {Jlmtm'dner) in Ifflands's Plays; only, alas! there 
was no noble character to thwart and counteract him. The day before 
his death, in discharging a man whom he had imprisoned for six weeks on 
a charge of suspected revolutionary practices, he publicly said, " Last 
month I sent you word that I wanted to speak to you; — you would not 
come. I have given you this little lesson for it, which I hope will make 
you more complying in future: if not, in six weeks more you shall swing; 
of that you may rest assured!" The county was at that time under 
1 martial law,^ in consequence of some disturbances; and almost unlimited 
power was given to the local authorities, whose insolence and atrocity 
therefore knew no bounds. The immediate cause of Baker's death was 
of a kind which deprives one of all pity for him. He was indebted £500 
to a dairyman, partly for articles supplied to his household, partly for 
money he had borrowed. This he had promised to pay as soon as the 
man found a suitable match for his daughter, whose portion the money 
was to be. In a few years this took place, and the dairyman humbly en- 
treated to be paid. Baker, however, continually put him off under various 
pretences; and finding he could obtain nothing but vain promises, the poor 
fellow at length threatened him with an action, and set off for Cork to 
consult a lawyer. Taking advantage of his absence, Baker appeared the 



41S LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

next day at his house, followed by a detachment of soldiers, and with in- 
fernal hypocrisy asked his wife, then pregnant of her seventh child, whe- 
ther she knew of any concealed arms, and told her that her husband was 
strongly accused of having secreted some. The woman answered without 
fear or hesitation, that she was sure no such thing existed in her house; 
that her husband would never have any tiling to do with such plots; as 
Mr. Baker himself, who was an old acquaintance, well knew. " Take 
care what you say," said Baker; " for if any thing is found after you have 
denied it, you are subject to transportation for life." The woman per- 
sisted in her denial " Well, then, at your peril be it," said he. '* Sol- 
diers, search the house thoroughly, and bring me word what you find." 
They found nothing; but a second search being made, under Baker's own 
superintendance, a loaded pistol was produced by some man, who pre- 
tended to have found it under some straw; into which it was always sus- 
pected Baker himself had just thrust it. The woman was immediately 
dragged away, and being regarded as convicted by the presence of the 
corpus delicti, was, after a short trial, sentenced to transportation. In a 
few days her husband returned, and moved heaven and earth to obtain her 
pardon. In vain did he entreat that at least he might be suffered to go to 
Botany Bay instead of his unhappy wife, the pregnant mother of *ix chil- 
dren. He offered to give Baker the £500. But this fiend remained in- 
exorable, jeeringly reminding the despairing husband " that he wanted 
the money to portion off his daughter, who," he added, " might now keep 
house for him, if after the consequences of the search he had still any 
house to keep. That he need not trouble himself about his wife's travel- 
ling expenses, for that the Government would generously provide for them." 
The law had its course; the poor woman was transported, and is perhaps 
now at Port Jackson. The husband, made furious by despair, and joined 
by her brothers and two other men, shortly after avenged her, by Baker's 
cruel death. They fell upon him in the open fields, hunted him like a 
wild beast, and killed him slowly by a number of shots. All were taken 
and hanged. 

Tales of horror like this were formerly of daily occurrence in this un- 
happy land, and even now have not entirely ceased. That such a con- 
trast should exist between England and Ireland, and under the same 
Government too; that it should be suffered to endure for centuries, is in- 
deed afflicting to every philanthropic mind. Unbridled bigotry, and ra- 
pacity unwilling to disgorge any part of its former prey, are the causes; — 
six millions of human beings the victims. 

I have nothing remarkable to relate concerning my dinner-party: it was 
like its predecessors, and lasted far too long. 

It was formerly the custom to give parties, of which the s.ole and avow- 
ed object was desperate drinking, — a fashion which is comparatively fallen 
into disuse. It was a common thing for a man to lock himself into a room 
with a hogshead of wine and some jolly companions, and not to leave it 
till the last drop was emptied. Barrington mentions such a party in his 
memoirs. It was given in a shooting lodge, in which the wall had been 
covered with mortar only the day before, and was of course still wet. 
Here the company were locked in with a pipe of claret, just arrived from 
France; and when some of them who had tumbled against the wall, awoke 
in the morning from their night's debauch, they found themselves so 
thoroughly identified with it that they were obliged to be cut away, some 
with the loss of their clothes and others of their hair. 

After my guests had exhausted their store of anecdotes, which were not 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 419 

precisely of a kind to entertain you with, they resorted to all sorts of 
practical jokes and ' tours de force.' One of these was quite new to me. 
It is an experiment which any body may try, and it struck me as curious 
enough. The wildest and fiercest game-cock may be rendered motionless, 
and compelled to lie in deathlike stillness as long as you please, by simply 
laying him on a table, with his beak close to a white line drawn across it. 
Nothing is necessary but first to draw this line with chalk, then to take 
the cock in your hands and lay him on the table with his beak turned to- 
wards it. You press him down, and there he will lie as if bound by some 
spell; his beak stretched out, and his eyes immoveably fixed on the white 
line, till you take him away. The experiment must be tried by candle- 
light. 

* Voila de grandes bagatelles, mais a la guerre comme a la guerre.' 

Oct. 9.Zd. 

As Fitzpatrick the piper, whom I had sent for to my party yesterday, 
was still in the town, I had him come to play 'privatim' in my room while 
I breakfasted, and observed his instrument more accurately. It is, as 
you know, peculiar to Ireland, and contains a strange mixture of ancient 
and modern times. The primitive simple bagpipe is blended with the 
flute, the oboe, and some tones of the organ and of the bassoon: altogether 
it forms a strange but pretty complete concert. The small and elegant 
bellows which are connected with it are fastened to the left arm by means 
of a riband, and the leathern tube communicating between them and the 
bag lies across the body; while the hands play on an upright pipe with 
holes like a flageolet, which forms the end of the instrument, and is con- 
nected with four or five others joined together like a colossal Pan's pipe. 
During the performance, the right arm moves incessantly backwards and 
forwards on the body, in order to fill the bellows. The opening of a 
valve brings out a deep humming sound, which forms an * unisono' ac- 
companiment to the air. By this agitation of his whole body, while his 
fingers were busied on the pipes I have described, Fitzpatrick produced 
tones which no other instrument could give out. The sight, in which 
you must picture to yourself the handsome old man with his fine head of 
snow-white hair, is most original and striking; it is, if I may say so, tragi- 
comic. His bagpipe was very splendidly adorned, the pipes were of 
ebony ornamented with silver, the riband embroidered, and the bag cover- 
ed wi^i flame-coloured silk fringed with silver. 

I begged him to play me the oldest Irish airs; wild compositions, which 
generally begin with a plaintive and melancholy strain like the songs of 
the Slavonic nations, but end with a jig, the national dance, or with a 
martial air. One of these melodies gave the lively representation of a 
fox-hunt, another seemed to me borrowed from the Hunters' Chorus in 
the Freischiitz; it was five hundred years older. * Les beaux esprits se 
rencontrent dans tous les ages.' 

After playing some time, the venerable piper suddenly stopped, and 
said smiling, with singular grace, " It must be already well known to 
you, noble Sir, that the Irish bagpipe yields no good tones when sober: 
it requires the evening, or the stillness of night, joyous company, and the 
delicious fragrance of steaming whiskey-pwnch. Permit me, therefore, to 
take my leave." 

I offered such a present as I thought worthy of this find old man, 
whose image will always float before me as a true representative of Irish 
nationality. 



420 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

With Fitzpatrick I take my leave of you, dearest Julia, to set out on 
my return to Dublin, whence I calculate on despatching my next letter 
to you. 

Your faithful L . 



LETTER XL. 

Dublin, October 24th, 1828. 
Good and dear Friend, 

. After leading a half savage life so long, the tameness of the city ap- 
pears quite strange. I can now imagine the home-sickness of the North 
American Indians, even the most civilized of whom always return to their 
woods at last. Freedom has such a matchless charm. 

Yesterday, after dinner, I left Cashel, taking Captain S 's brother 

in the carriage with me. While daylight lasted we saw at least twenty 
ruins, far and near. One of the most beautiful stands at the foot of an 
isolated hill, Killough Hill, called the garden of Ireland, because, ac- 
cording to the popular tradition, every indigenous plant in Ireland is to 
be found on it. The cause of this unwonted fertility is, that it was for- 
merly the summer residence of the fairy queen, whose gardens bloomed 
here. The soil still retains some portion of its wondrous virtues. The 
ruin has likewise one of the mysterious slender round towers without any 
entrance. Some few of them have an opening or door, not at the bottom, 
however, but in the middle. It is impossible to conceive a more romantic 
watch-tower for the fairy hill. The weather was remarkably mild and 
beautiful, and the full moon so brilliant that I could read with perfect 
ease in my carriage. We slept, nevertheless, through a great part of the 
night. 

I found a letter from you in Dublin; — a thousand thanks for all the kind- 
ness and affection towards me which it contains. Do not be too anxious 
as to the situation of your friend. Tell her she must act as necessity re- 
quires, avert what can be averted, postpone inevitable evil as long as pos- 
sible, but always bear calmly what is actually present. This at least is 
my philosophy. Your quotation from Madame de Sevigne amused me 
extremely. Her letters are certainly extraordinary; repeating the same 
things, and those trivial enough, though volume after volume; yet ]|v the 
new turn she continually gives them, always entertaining, sometimes be- 
witching; depicting court, city and country with equal grace; taking a 
somewhat affected love for the most insignificant of women as her main 
theme, yet never wearying: these were certainly conditions which no one 
but herself could have fulfilled. She is not in the least degree romantic, 
nor was she, while living, remarkably distinguished; but she is, without 
question, the best-bred model « du ton le plus parfait' Without doubt 
she also possessed « good temper' bestowed by nature, ennobled and re- 
fined by art. Art is at least visible throughout; and probably her letters, 
which she knew were eagerly read by many, were carefully polished, and 
were calculated as much for society as for her daughter; for the admirable 
lightness of her style betrays much more of care than the ' epanchement' 
of the moment permits. The representation of the manners of the day 
has a considerable effect in heightening the interest of the letters, but I 
doubt whether such letters written now would enjoy equal success. We 
are become both too serious and too avaricious. « Les jolis riens ne suffisent 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 421 

plus.' We want excitement, and violent excitement. Where a giant 
like Byron appears, little prettinesses sink into insignificance. 

I was just now reading in his works, — for I never travel without them. 
I fell upon the description of a scene precisely like many I have lately 
witnessed. In what elevated language did I find my own feelings express- 
ed ! I translate it for yq|i as well as I can, in a sort of poetic prose, and 
as literally as possible: — 

Der Himmel wandclt sich! — Welch ein Wechsel! O Nacht — 

Und Sturm und Finsterniss, wohl seyd ihr wundcrmachtig! 

Doch lieblich Eure Macht — dem Lichte gleich, 

Das aus dem dunklen Aug des Weibes bricht. — Weithin 

Von Gipfel zu Gipfel, die schmetternden Felsen cntlang 

Springt der eilende Donner. Nicht die einsame Wolke allein, 

Jeder Berg hat eine Zunge gefunden, 

Und Jura sendet durch den Nebelvorhang Antwort 

Zuruck, dem lauten Zuruf der jubelnden Alpen. 

Das ist eine Nacht! — o herrliche Nacht! 

Du wurdest nicht gesandt tiir Schlummer. Lass auch mich 

Ein Thcilnehmer seyn an Deiner wilden, fernhin schallenden Freude 

Ein Theil vom Sturme — und ein Theil deiner selbst — : 

Wie der See erleuchtet glanzt — gleich dem phosphorischen Meer! 

Und die vollen Regentropfen — wie sie herabtanzen auf seine Wellen! 

Und nun wird Alles wieder schwarz — und von neuem 

Hallt der Berge Chorus wieder, in lauter Lust, 

Als sang' er Triumph Uber eines jungen Erdbebens Geburt!* 

Is not that beautiful? What true poetic feeling! What a pity that we 
have no good translation of his works. Gothe alone were able to give a 
perfectly satisfactory version of them, — if he were not occupied in 
creating what equals them in grandeur, and surpasses them in lightness, 
grace and sweetness. 

October Q5th 
I called yesterday at the Lord Lieutenant's house in the Phoenix Park. 
He invited me to dine with him to-day. The party was brilliant. He is 
beloved in,Ireland for his impartiality, and for the favour he has always 
shown to the cause of emancipation. His exploits as a general officer are 
well known, and no man has a more graceful and polished address in so- 
ciety.-? A more perfect work of art than his false leg I never saw. The 

* 

* The sky is changed! — and such a change! Oh night, 
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, 
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light 
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, 
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among 
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, 
But every mountain now hath found a tongue, 
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, 
Back to {he joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! 

And this is in the night: — Most glorious night! 

Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be 

A sharer in thy fierce and far delight, — 

A portion of the tempest and of thee! 

How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, 

And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! 

And now again 'tis black, — and now, the glee 

Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth, 

As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth. 




422 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Marquis, although not young, has still a very fine person, and his artifi- 
cial leg and foot rival the other ' a s'y meprendre.' The only thing which 
betrays it, is some little difficulty in walking. On the whole, I know few 
Englishmen who have so good a ' tournure' as the present Lord Lieute- 
nant of Ireland. When he resides in the city, a very rigid etiquette, like 
that of a little court, is observed; but in the country he lives like a pri- 
vate gentleman. The power and dignity of a Lord Lieutenant are consi- 
derable as representative of the King; but he holds them only at the plea- 
sure of the ministry. Among other privileges he has that of creating Ba- 
ronets; and in former times inn-keepers, and men even less qualified, 
have received that dignity. When his functions cease he gains no acces- 
sion of rank by the past performance of them. His salary during his con- 
tinuance in office is £50,000 per annum, and a residence free of charge; 
so that he can very well lay by his own income. This, however, the pre- 
sent Lord Lieutenant does not appear disposed to do: his establishment 
is very liberal and splendid. He is surrounded too by very interesting 
men, who unite extreme good breeding with frankness and cordiality, and 
seem to judge of party questions with moderation and good sense. From 
what I have said, it may safely be presumed that Lord Anglesea's resi- 
dence here will not be of long duration; and indeed I heard some hints 
to that effect. As he suffers dreadfully from Ticdouloureux, I recom- 
mended H to him, as a person remarkable for cures of that com- 
plaint, and gave his physician the book in which he treats of it. The 
Marquis said, smiling, " I shall find no difficulty in obtaining leave of 
absence;" at the same time casting a significant glance on his private se- 
cretary. This confirmed me in the surmise I have just expressed. It will 
be a great calamity for Ireland, who rejoices in the new and unaccustom- 
ed blessing of a governor who views the disgusting religious dissensions 
by which she has so long been torn, with the eye of a philosopher. 

Before I drove to the Phcenix Park I attended divine worship in a Ca- 
tholic chapel. It is a handsome building: the interior is a large oval, with 
a colonnade of Ionic pillars running round it, surmounted by a beautiful 
dome, and an excellent alto-relievo in the arched roof above the altar: it 
represents the Ascension. The figure and expression of our Saviour are 
peculiarly admirable. The fancy of the artist has placed him before us 
such as we must imagine him. The Catholics affirm that they possess 
genuine portraits of Christ. Indeed, in the south of Germany I once 
saw an advertisement of a collection of genuine portraits of God Al- 
mighty. 

The chief altar stands quite alone, and is of a simple and beautiful. 
form: it is of white marble, and was made in Italy. The slab on the top j\ 
and the base are of dark marble. The front facade is divided into three ** 
compartments, on the middle is a monstrous pyx of gold bronze, and on 
each side bas-reliefs of praying angels. 

Above, on the centre of the altar, stands a magnificent temple of splen- 
did gems and gold, in which the real pyx is kept, and near it two no less 
magnificent golden candlesticks. On each side of the altar stands a tri- 
pod, supported by angels with folded wings; on the tablet at the top are 
placed the Host and the wine. The details are executed in the best pos- 
sible taste, and a grand simplicity reigns through the whole. From the 
roof hangs a massive silver chain, supporting an antique lamp of the same 
metal, which is kept perpetually burning. It is certainly one of the most 
beautiful institutions of the Catholic religion, that some churches stand 
open day and night to all who long for communion with Heaven. In Italy 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 423 

I scarcely ever went to rest without visiting one of these; and giving my- 
self up to the. wondrous eftect produced in the stillness of night by the red 
fantastic light thrown on the vaulted roof by the few scattered lamps, I 
never failed to find some solitary figure, kneeling in supplicating rever- 
ence before one of the altars, busied only with his God and himself, and 
utterly unmindful of all that passed around. In one of these churches 
stood the gigantic statute of St. Christopher, leaning against the middle 
pillar, and touching the roof with his head. On his shoulders was his 
heavy burthen, the miraculous child; and in his hand, as a statf", a full- 
grown trunk of a tree, with fresh green boughs, which were renewed 
every month. The light of a lamp suspended above, surrounded the in- 
fant Christ with a glory, and threw some rays, as if in benediction, upon 
the pious giant. 

When 1 compare the Catholic service as it is performed here, with that 
of the English Protestant church, I must unquestionably prefer the for- 
mer. It may perhaps contain some superfluous ceremonies, some which 
even border on the burlesque, such as the tossing about of the censers, 
the continual shifting of dresses, &c. ; but still this form of worship has a 
sort of antique grandeur which imposes and satisfies. The music was ex- 
cellent; the singers very good, and, which amazingly enhanced the effect, 
invisible. Some Protestants call this a taint of sensuality; but I cannot 
discover why the scream of an unmusical Lutheran congregation, which 
rends one's ears, should be more pious than good music, executed by peo- 
ple who have been well taught.* Even with a view to the contents of the 
sermon, the comparison was greatly to the advantage of the Catholic 
church. While the Protestant congregation at Tuam was entertained 
with miracles, swine, and evil spirits, the discourse here was purely moral 
and practical. The eloquent preacher had taken envy as his subject, and 
said among other excellent remarks, "If you would know whether you 
are entirely free from this crime, so afflicting to humanity, so degrading 
to the individual who cherishes it, — examine yourselves thoroughly, whe- 
ther you never experienced an unquiet and dissatisfied feeling at the con- 
stant and growing prosperity of another; whether you never felt a slight 
satisfaction at the tidings that some mischance had happened to a fortunate 
neighbour? This is a serious inquiry, and few will make it earnestly 
without advantage." 

The way in which every one reads silently in his prayer-book, while the 
sublime music elevates the soul, and withdraws it from the earthly and 
trivial, appears to me far preferable to the loud responses and prayers of 
the Anglican church. During this interval of silent veneration, little heed 
is given to the ceremonies, the change of raiment, or the incensing the 
priests. Rut even allowing for these slight blemishes, the Catholic church 
strikes the mind, as a whole, as something congruous and harmonious 
with itself, and venerable from its antiquity and its consistency: the En- 
glish Protestant church, on the contrary, as something patch-work, in- 
congruous, and unconnected. In connexion with the German church (of 
course I mean as it is understood by such men as Krugand Paulus,) these 
two establishments might be likened to three individuals who were in a 
magnificent place, affording every variety of enjoyment, and of valuable 
information; but shut out from God's sun and his beautiful open creation 

* Much has lately been done towards improving 1 , I might say humanizing, the 
music in the churches in Prussia; and the influence of this improvement on the con- 
gregations have been universally found to be very beneficial. — Editob. 



424 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

by a high wall. The first of the three was satisfied with the glitter of the 
jewels and the light of the tapers, and never cast one wistful glance to- 
ward the few chinks in the wall which admitted some glimpse of daylight. 
The other two were restless and dissatisfied; they felt that there was 
something still better and fairer abroad, and determined to get over the 
high wall, cost what it would. Well provided with every thing they 
thought they should want, they began this great undertaking. They had 
many perils, many inconveniences to encounter, but at length they reach- 
ed the top. Here, indeed, they could behold the sun's radiant counte- 
nance, but clouds often concealed it, and the beautiful green of the mea- 
dows beneath was often deformed by weeds and thorns, amidst which ter- 
rible wild beasts roamed prowling about. But nothing could daunt the 
second of the three, nor turn him from his enterprise; his intense desire 
for freedom conquered all fear and all doubt: unhesitatingly, he let him- 
self down into the new world, and as he left every thing behind him that 
he might be perfectly unimpeded, he soon disappeared within the sacred 
enclosure. As to the third, he remains still sitting on the wall, between, 
heaven and earth; still living on the food, and delighting in the finery he 
brought with him from below, and unable to wean himself from it, though 
the rays of the sun, which now fall uninterrupted on the false tinsel, shows 
it in all its worthlessness. Like the ass in the fable, he hesitates between 
the two bundles of hay, without knowing which to prefer. Backward he 
cannot go, and he has not courage to go forward; the flesh-pots of Canaan 
detain him where he is — so long as they last. 

October 9.7th. 

If I do not choose to make l allolriaS that is to talk of things which 
have nothing to do with my travels or my residence here, living in the 
world will make my letters very barren. I could draw out a scheme or 
formula and have it lithographed, leaving a few blanks to be filled ad libi- 
tum. For instance, "Rose late, and out of humour. Walked, rode, or 

drove out to make visits. Dined with Lord , or Mr. ; dinner 

good, or bad; conversation, common places. Evening, a tiresome party, 
rout,' ball, or above all, amateur concert. N. B. My ears still ache." In 
London, might be added, as a standing remark, "The crowd nearly suf- 
focated me, and the heat was greater than on the highest bench of a Rus- 
sian vapour bath. Physical exertion to-day =5 degrees (reckoning a 
fox-hunt at 20,) intellectual profit therefrom =0. Result, 'Diem per- 
didi.'" 

It is not quite so bad here: in this season the fatigue one has to under- 
go does not exceed that of a large German town; but there are a great 
superabundance of invitations which one cannot civilly refuse. For how 
truly can I say with the English poet, "How various are the feelings of 
guests in that world which is called great and gay, but which is the most 
melancholy and tedious of any to those who cannot share in its gaiety!" 

October 28th. 

I am just returned from a dinner-party, in which there was rather a 
provincial tone, but no want of pretension. Some things were comical 
enough; but the worst of it is, one buys a little laughing with such a quan- 
tity of ennui. The dinner too was a real ' mystification' for a 'gourmet,' 
and the house and park correspond with it. 

My propitious star placed me at table next to Lord P , a celebrated 

political character, who has taken his stand on the good and noble side, 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 425 

and has remained faithful to the cause of emancipation. It gave me great 
pleasure to find that his views of things agreed so perfectly with those 
which I had been led to entertain from my own observations on the spot. 
One of his expressions struck me by its 'naivete.' I remarked to him, 
that from what I saw, even emancipation could do little good; for that 
the real evil was, that the soil was the property of an aristocracy, whose 
interests would always lead them to reside in England; and above all, 
the sums which were extorted from the poor Catholics by the Protestant 
church. So long as this remained unaltered, I saw no hope of any better 
state of things. 

"Yes," replied he; "but to alter that is impossible. If the Protestant 
clergy were deprived of their wealth they would lose all their import- 
ance." " How can that be?" replied I, laughing. " Is it possible that 
virtue, mild instruction, and pious devotion to the duties of his office, 
would not ensure to a clergyman, even of the highest rank, more respect 
with a moderate income than immoderate luxury; or are 20,000/. a-ycar 
really necessary ' to make a Bishop or Archbishop appear decently in so- 
ciety?'" "My dear Sir," answered Lord P , "such a thing may 

exist and maintain itself abroad, but will never do in Old England, where, 
above all, money, and much 7noney, is required and necessary to obtain 
respectability and consideration." This remark' was not applied to the 
aristocracy; but it is not the less true that money is essential to its very 
existence, although it now affects, with no little display of haughtiness, 
to estimate noble birth far above mere wealth. 

Lady M , who was present, entertained the company as usual by 

her wit. She amused me with some diverting anecdotes * 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

It is remarkable, that in no country does one meet half so many old 
maids as in England; and very frequently they are rich. Their excessive 
pride of wealth, which leads them to think no rank and greatness suffi- 
cient for them, or the exaggerated romantic notions in which they are 
brought up, are the causes of this phenomenon. English girls insist on 
being loved entirely and solely for themselves. French women make no 
such pretension, judging rightly enough, that this devoted affection will 
grow out of marriage, where there are the qualities fitted to produce it; 
and that where these do not exist, it will not endure, whatever the lover 
may say or believe to the contrary. The English, like true Turks, keep 
the intellects of their wives and daughters in as narrow bounds as possi- 
ble, with a view of securing their absolute and exclusive property in them 
as much as possible, and in general their success is perfect.* A foreigner 
serves as an amusement, a plaything to Englishwomen, but always in- 
spires them with some degree of fear and reserve. It is extremely rare 
for them to bestow as much of their confidence upon him as upon a coun- 

• Nothing can be a more astonishing proof of the difficulty of comparing the moral 
and intellectual character of two countries than this remark. Every Englishman 
accustomed to the cultivated society of his own country, must be struck by the ex- 
traordinary inferiority of German female education, in proportion to the high supe- 
riority of that of men. The solution is probably this: — The Author was chiefly con- 
fined to fashionable society here, and mixed little with the more instructed classes. 
In Germany, it is precisely the women of the middling classes who are so lamentably 
deficient in education, — a defect, of course, there as every where attributable to 
those who govern their destiny, and who profess sentiments even more unworthy 
than those here attributed to Englishmen, The motive ascribed to the latter is 
surely more strong and more noble than the desire of possessing a thorough cook or 
a contented drudge. — Tkans. 

54 



426 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

tryman. They regard him as a half atheist, or a superstitious worshipper 
of Baal, and sometimes amuse themselves with attempting to convert him. 
I do not speak here of the London Exclusives; they give the same result 
as the rubbing together of all colours, — none remains. 

October 2.9th. 

The beautiful weather tempted me out into the country. I rode about 
the whole day, and saw two tine seats, Malahide and Howth. They have 
one peculiarity in common; both have remained for nine hundred years 
in the possession of the same family, which no English seat that I have seen 
or heard of can boast. Malahide has also an historical interest, for it be- 
longs to the Talbots; and the armour of the celebrated warrior, with the 
mark of a blow from a partisan on the breast is preserved here. One-half 
of the castle is extremely old, the other was demolished by Cromwell, 
and rebuilt in the antique style. In the former part they showed me 
chairs five hundred years old, and a room in which the rich 'boiserie,' the 
carved ceiling and the floor, all of black oak, had remained unchanged 
for seven hundred years. The new part contains many interesting pic- 
tures. 

There is a portrait of the Duchess of Portsmouth, so lovely that I al- 
most envied Charles the Second even in his grave, the glory of making 
her a Duchess. An old picture of Mary Stuart, although represented at 
an advanced period of her life, confirmed me in my conviction of the re- 
semblance of the portrait of this unfortunate and beautiful queen, which 
I saw in the County Wicklow. I looked with interest at a scene at the 
court ot Madrid, with a portrait of the king seated in great solemnity 
in a scarlet robe; Charles the First, as Prince of Wales, dancing rather 
' legereinent,' a minuet with the Infanta; and the gay, seducing Bucking- 
ham magnificently dressed, and paying assiduous court to one of the la- 
dies of honour. 

Howth Castle, belonging to the St. Lawrence family, and inhabited by 
Lord Howth, who is no absentee, has been more modernized, and with 
no happy effect. The Grecian portico accords but ill with the small Go- 
thic windows and the high gables. Here likewise the sword and ar- 
mour of a celebrated ancestor with a romantic name is carefully preserved. 
He was called Sir Armoricus Tristram, and in the year 1000 gave battle 
to the Danes on this spot, and I think lost his life. The antique stables 
were full of noble hunters: Lord Howth's hounds are also very celebrated. 
On my return I went to the theatre, where Ducrow, fhe English Franco- 
ni, ennobles his art by his admirable representation of animated statues. 
This is a high enjoyment to a lover of art, and far surpasses the ' Ta- 
bleaux' which are in such favour on the continent. When the curtain 
draws up, you see a motionless statue on a lofty pedestal in the centre of 
the stage. This is Ducrow; and it is hardly credible how an elastic 
dress can fit so exquisitely and so perfectly represent marble, only here 
and there broken by a bluish vein. He appeared first as the Hercules 
Farnese. With the greatest skill and precision he then gradually quitted 
his attitude from one gradation to another, of display of strength; but at 
the moment in which he presented a perfect copy of the most celebrated 
statues of antiquity, he suddenly became fixed as if changed to marble. 
Helmet, sword, and shield, were now given to him, and transformed him 
in a moment into the wrathful Achilles, Ajax, and other Homeric heroes. 
Then came the Discobolus and others, all equally perfect and true. The 
last was the attitude of the fighting Gladiator, succeeded by a masterly 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 427 

representation of the dying Gladiator. Tins man must be an admirable 
model for painters and sculptors: his form is faultless, and he can throw 
himself into any attitude with the utmost ease and grace. It struck me 
how greatly our unmeaning dancing might be ennobled, if something like 
"what I have described were introduced, instead of the absurd and vulgar 
hopping and jumping with which we are now entertained. It gave me 
pain to see this fine artist, (for he certainly merits no less a name,) ride 
nine horses at once, in the character of a Chinese sorcerer; drive twelve 
at once in that of a Russian courier; and lastly, go to bed with a poney 
dressed as an old woman. 

I must now bid you good night, and good-bye for some days. To-mor- 
row morning early this letter will go by post. 

Your faithful L 



LETTER XLI. 

Dublin, October 50th, 1828. 
Dearest Julia, 

Oh what reproaches! However, three letters at once are a compensation 
for every thing. I read the news from home till I nearly appeased my 
appetite for it, and can hardly express my gratitude to you 

* * * :•:- * * * * * * 

You are indeed right; such an ally as you would be of great use to me. 
Governess Prose would have kept Poetry better within bounds; and the 
boy who never grows old, and whose nature it is to play with gay 
soap-bubbles, would perhaps, under the guidance of a sage Mentor, have 
tried to pluck some more solid earthly fruit, instead of grasping at the rain- 
bow balls. ' Mais tout ce qui est, est pour le mieux !' Let us never for- 
get this axiom. Voltaire was wrong to turn it into jest; and Panglos was 
really in the right. This persuasion can alone console us under all af- 
flictions; and for myself, I confess it is the essence of my religion. 

Your letter No. I. is wisdom and goodness itself: but, dear Julia, as 
far as the former is concerned, it is powder and shot thrown away upon 
me. I am too much — what shall I call it? — a man of feeling and impulse, 
and shall never be wise, I e. prudent in a worldly sense. But I am so 
much the more accessible to kindness, — yours only excepted; the measure 
of which is already so full and overflowing, that not a drop more can find 
entrance into my heart. With this full heart you must once for all be 
satisfied; your poor friend can give you no more. But is it possible that 
you can find room for fears that these two years of absence can have 
changed me towards vou? that I may no longer find in you what I for- 
merly found, — and so on. Do you know what the English would call 
this? — ' Nonsense.' That I can wish nothing more intensely than to see 
you again, my unwearied correspondence might surely convince you; but 
you quite forget that : * * 

How often have I told you that I am not suited to the world! My defects 
as well as my merits, nay even the intellectual character which you ima- 
gine you find in me, are only so many stumbling-blocks in my way. A 
man who is intelligent, somewhat poetical, good-natured and sincere, is 
commonly awkward and ill at ease in every-day society. Like all those, — 
to use the words of an English writer, — whose feelings and affections pa- 



428 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ralyze their advantages, I do not find out till too late what was the pru- 
dent and discreet course: "an artless disposition," continues the Eng- 
lishman, " which is ill adapted to enter the lists with the cunning and the 
cold selfishness of the world." I know a distinguished man, a hundred- 
fold my superior, who in this respect is in the same predicament, and who 
continually laments that he has been transformed from a poet into a states- 
man. "I ought to have ended my life as I began it," said he; " wan- 
dering about the world unknown, and rejoicing undisturbed in the beauty 
and grandeur of God's works; or remote from men, shut up in my study, 
alone with my books, my fancy, and my faithful dog. "* 

Oct. $\st. 

I spent a very pleasant evening to-day at Lady M 's. The com- 
pany was small, but amusing, and enlivened by the presence of two very 
pretty friends of our hostess, who sang in the best Italian style. I talked 

a great deal with Lady M on various subjects, and she has talent and 

feeling enough always to excite a lively interest in her conversation. On 
the whole, I think 1 did not say enough in her favour in my former letter; 
at any rate, I did not then know one of her most charming qualities, — 
that of possessing two such pretty relatives. 

The conversation fell upon her works, and she asked me how I liked 
her Salvator Rosa? " I have not read it," replied I; "because," (I added 
by way of excusing myself, ' tant bien que real,') "I like your fictions so 
much, that I did not choose to read any thing historical from the pen of 
the most imaginative of romance writers." "O, that is only a romance," 
said she; "you may read it without any qualms of conscience." "Very 
well," thought I; "probably that will apply to your travels too," — but 
this I kept to myself. "Ah," said she, " believe me, it is only ennui 
that sets my pen in motion; our destiny in this world is such a wretched 
one that I try to forget it in writing. " (Probably the Lord Lieutenant 
had not invited her, or some other great personage had failed in his en- 
gagement to her, for she was quite out of spirits.) " What a fearful puz- 
zle is this world," said she: " Is there a presiding Power or not? And if 
there be one, and he were malevolent! what a horrible idea!" " But in 
Heaven's name," replied I, "how can a woman of sense, like you, — for- 
give me, — utter such nonsense?" " Ah, I know well enough all that you 
can say on that subject," said she; "certainly, no man can give me." 
This obscurity in a most acute mind was unintelligible to me, even in a 
woman. (' Ne vous en fachez pas, Julie!') 

Lady M 's husband, formerly a physician, now a philosopher and 

author, and what the French call 'un bon homme,' affecting moreover the 
man of taste and judgment, gave me a book of his, containing a thoroughly 
materialist system of philosophy: there are, however, some good things in 
it, and it has altogether more merit than I should have expected from the 
author. I was busied in reading it half the night. From the unconnected 
and daring character of the whole, I however concluded either that Lady 

M had written a considerable portion of it herself, or at least that 

these views of things had thrown her mind into such a state of doubt and 
confusion, that she had actually imagined the question whether God might 

• We ought perhaps to apologize for suffering this and other similar passages to 
be printed. But whoever has read thus far, must interest himself in some degree 
for or against the Author: and in either case these unrestrained judgments upon 
himself cannot be wholly unwelcome to the reader who likes what is characteristic. 
Those who like only facts, may easily pass them over. — Editor. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 429 

not possibly be malevolent Your celebrated people arc but men like 
others, Heaven knows! — scholars and statesmen, philosophers and poets. 
At every acquaintance of this sort that I make, I think of Oxenstierna, 
who, when his young son expressed some hesitation and diffidence as to 
the part he should play at the Congress of Minister in the presence of so 
many great and wise men, replied with a smile, "Ah, my son, depart in 
peace, and see by what manner of men the world is governed !" 

Nov. 1st. 

1 Les Catholiques me font la cour ici. ' The * * * sent me word through 
his wife, that as I was a lover of their church music, I should go to their 
chapel to-day, where the choir would be remarkably full and good, and 
he himself was to perform the service. I heard indeed some magnificent 
vocal music, (in which female voices took part,) accompanied only by 
some few notes of a powerful organ. It was a high enjoyment — this 
sublime music, which filled the soul with a fulness of delight, and raised 
it on its soft wings above the cares of this lower world, while the whole 
congregation knelt in reverent supplication. 

You will begin to think, dear Julia, that I intend to imitate the Duke 

of C , and turn Catholic. And to say the truth, the motives which 

lead to such a change do not appear to me wholly absurd. Protestantism, — 
such Protestantism as we commonly find, — is not a whit more rational, 
and far less poetical and attractive to the senses. I am fully persuadL'd, 
however, that a new Luther or a new Messiah is at hand, and will help 
us through all our difficulties and doubts: then we shall not need to cast 
a look behind us; — till then, I can quite imagine that many may find more 
consistency, at least, in the Catholic faith. It is no imperfect half-idola- 
try, but perfect 'and consistent, — a ladder descending from heaven to 
earth, whose last steps are those deified creatures, those kind sympathiz- 
ing saints of both sexes, who are so near to us, and who know so well 

our human wishes, emotions, and passions! * * * 

-* * * * * * * * * * 

"When the priest and the acolytes toss about the censers; when the bishop 
every minute puts on a fresh embroidered garment, — now standing still 
before the altar, now running forwards, then backwards, then touching 
the ground with his forehead, and at length turning himself about like a 
weather-cock with the pyx, and then keeping his eyes fixed upon it as 
upon a microscope, — I am perfectly prepared to hear any of the miracles, 
wonders, or monstrous absurdities with which religion has been overlaid. 
But when a man in simple garb, and quiet reasonable appearance, gets up 
and speaks to me of patience, of purity, of eternal truth and eternal 
love, and then goes on to ascribe to the God of justice and of love, and to 
his noblest and purest interpreter on earth, fables and attrocities which 
shock every sound and unperverted understanding, and then requires me 
"to receive them as something holy and divine, — I turn disgusted from 
such hypocrisy or such folly. A bigot may reply, Your sound under- 
standing is no measure for the ways or the works of God. To which I 
answer, But your God is a human being; and our understanding and our 
reason, with our knowledge of external nature, and the experience thence 
derived, are the only true and genuine revelation of God, of which we 
are all sharers and which no one can doubt. Man is so formed by na- 
ture, that it is his inevitable destiny for ever to carry on through these 
means his own education, for ever to advaiue in the career of improve- 



430 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

ment. Thus Christianity was a consequence of this progressive civiliza- 
tion; as were at an earlier period the Mosaic law, and at a later the 
Reformation, and its second act the French Revolution. Its latest re- 
sults are the universal liberty of thought and of printing which have sprung 
from the latter event, and all that is now preparing by their more tran- 
quil but so much the more certain operation. In every case we find only 
the results of the same gradual civilization. No man can know the high- 
est point which this civilization will reach; but be that point what it 
may, it must always retain its human character, and be furthered by hu- 
man means. 

November 2d. 

My last and longest visit this morning was to the sweet girls I met at 

Lady M 's. I took them some Italian music, which they sang like' 

nightingales, and with a total absence of all pretension and all affectation. 
Their father is a distinguished physician; and like most of the ' doctors' 
of eminence here, a ' Baronet' or 'Knight,' a title which is not esteemed 
a mark of nobility in England, although some families of great antiquity 
and consideration bear it. There are, however, Creti and Pleti, as among 
our lower nobility. A Baronet is generally called not by his family, but 
by his Christian name; as Sir Charles, Sir Anthony; as in Vienna they 
say, Graf Tinterle, Kiirst Muckerle, and so on. The medical Knight of 
whom I now speak, received his title in consequence of the establishment 
of excellent baths, and is a very interesting man. , His wife seemed to 
me still more remarkable for talent. She is very superior to her ce- 
lebrated relative in accurate tact and judgment, and possesses an extra- 
ordinary power of mimicry, whose comic bent does not always spare her 
own family. The daughters, though perfectly different, are both very 
original; the one in the gentle, the other in the wild 'genre.' I always 

call her Lady M 's ' wild Irish girl.' All three have a characteristic 

nationality, * and indeed have never quitted Ireland. 

In the evening Lady M told me that the translations of her works, 

which were often so bad as to destroy the sense, were a source of great 
vexation to her. In her Letters on Italy for instance, where she says of 
the Genoese, " They bought the scorn of all Europe," the translator read 
for scorn, corn, and wrote, ' Genes dans ce temps achetait tout le ble de 
l'Europe.' 

November 3d. 
I rose early, and went to the window, when a genuine Irish scene pre- 
sented itself to my eyes; such a one as no other country can show. Op- 
posite to me in the street sat an old woman selling apples, and smoking 
her pipe with great satisfaction. Nearer to the house a man in a ragged 
dress was performing all sorts of antics, assisted by his monkey. A re- 
gular ring of people, four or five deep, surrounded him, and at every * 
fresh trick there was a loud shout, accompanied by such 'demonstrations,' 
cries and gesticulations, that you would have thought they were quar- 
relling, and would soon get to blows. The recommencement of the act- 

* This is seldom to be met with in fashionable society, from the tyrannical de- 
mands of English education, which have a very wide influence in the three king- 
doms. You observe, therefore, that I often confound English and Irish under one 
common name; I ought more properly to call them British. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 431 

ing, however, immediately caused a deathlike stillness. But now the 
most lively person of the audience could not be satisfied to remain a mere 
spectator ; she must take a part in the action; and with uncontrollable 
gaiety sprang into the magic circle, seized the terrified monkey, and 
outdid him in antics, leaps, and grimaces of every kind, which were 
rewarded by the redoubled shouts and laughter of the multitude. The 
rage for acting grew infectious; many joined the first actress; the order 
which had hitherto prevailed became more and more lost in wild confusion; 
the original performer, anxious for the safety of his ally the monkey, or 
fearful lest he should be corrupted by bad example, broke hastily off*. 
His retreat soon assumed the air of a hurried flight; the whole crowd 
rushed, screaming and shouting, after him; every one tried to be close at 
his heels, some jeered at him, and several shilelahs, which pleasure had 
till now kept sheathed, came to view. Others took the part of the fleeing 
artist, who meanwhile disappeared; and before they knew what thy were 
about, the pursuit ended in a universal battle among the pursuers. 

A bachelor's dinner at Lord S 's, at which I was present, closed 

my day nearly as tumultuously, though not quite so violently, and kept 
me awake till midnight. ' Voila tout ce que j'ai a vous conter d'au- 
jourdhui.' 

November 6th. 

I spend a great deal of my time with the little nightingales, see Lady 

M frequently, and avoid general society as much as I can. The 

young ladies keep a burlesque journal, in which they write a chronicle of 
their daily 'fata,' illustrated with the most extravagant drawings, which 
is infinitely diverting. After that we sing, talk, or act pictures, in which 
the mother, with her talent for the drama, contrives admirable dresses 
out of the most heterogeneous materials. You would have laughed if you 
had seen the 'wild Irish girl,' with moustaches and whiskers marked with 
charcoal, pocket-handkerchief and stick in her hand, come in as my cari- 
cature. These girls have an inexhaustible fund of grace and vivacity, 
extremely un-English, but truly Irish. 

The eldest, who is eighteen, has brown eyes, and hair of a most sin- 
gular kind and expression, the latter has a sort of deep golden hue with- 
out being red, and in the former is a tranquil humid glow, over which 
comes at times a perfectly red light like that of fire; but yet it always 
remains only an intense glow, not a lightning-flash like that which often 
glances from the eyes of the little wild girl. With her, all is flame; and 
under her maidenly blushes there often breaks out the determination and 
high spirit of a boy. Indiscreet, and carried away by the impulse of the 
moment, she sometimes gives way to too great vivacity, which, however, 
from her sweet simplicity and inimitable grace, does but enhance the 
charm which distinguishes her. To-day when my carriage was announced, 
I exclaimed with a sigh, "Ah, que cette voiture vient mal apropos!" 
"Eh bien," cried she, with the perfect air of a little hussar, (she was 
still in male costume,) " envoyez. la au diable." A very severe and re- 
proving look from her mamma, and one of terror from hew gentle sister, 
covered all of her little face, that was not concealed by her disguise, over 
and over with scarlet: she cast down her eyes ashamed, and looked in- 
describably pretty. 



433 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Nov. \7th. 

Lady M received me to-day in her authoress-boudoir, where I 

found her writing, not without some view to effect, elegantly dressed, 
and with a mother-of-pearl and gold pen in her hand. She was employed 
on a new book, for winch she had invented a very good title, " Memoirs 
of Myself and for Myself." She asked me whether she should put ' of 
myself or « for myself first. I decided for the former as the more natural 
order; for I observed she must write, before she can have written. Upon 
this we fell into a sportive contest, in which she reproached me with my 
German pedantry, and maintained that hitherto 'bonnet blanc' and ' blanc 
bonnet' had been the same; the justice of which I was obliged to admit. 
The motto she had chosen was from Montaigne, ' Je n'enseigne pas, je 
raconte.' She read me some passages, which I thought very good. This 
woman, who appears so superficial, is quite another being when she takes 
the pen in her hand. 

She told me that she intended to go next winter to Paris, and wished 
to go on into Germany, but that she had a great dread of the Austrian 
police. I advised her to go to Berlin. " Shall not I be persecuted 
there?" said she. " God forbid!" rejoined I: " in Berlin talent is wor- 
shipped: only I advise you to take at least one of your pretty young 
friends, who is fond of dancing and dances well, so that you may be in- 
vited to the balls at court, and may thus have an opportunity of becoming 
acquainted with our amiable and accomplished young military men: they 
are well worth knowing, and you may not find any other way of being 
introduced to them." At this moment her husband entered, and begged 
me to get his philosophical work translated into German, that he might 
not figure there only as aid-de-camp to his wife, but fly with his own 
wings. I promised all he wished; but observed that a new prayer-book 
would have a better chance of success at the present day than a new 
system of philosophy, of which we had enough already. 

In the evening I took a box in the Equestrian theatre for the young 
ladies, who go out very little. Their ' naif delight at the varied skill of 
the riders was most charming to witness. The little one never turned 
her eyes for a moment from Ducrow's terrific feats; she trembled all over 
with anxiety and eagerness, and kept her hands fast clenched the whole 
time. 

There was a child of wonderful beauty in the company, just seven 
years old, who danced on horseback, performed a variety of parts with 
uncommon grace, and especially that of Napoleon, in which the tiny girl 
mimicked the abrupt manners of the Emperor most divertingly, and was 
rewarded by thunders of applause. My young friends wished to have 
a nearer view of her, and I accordingly went behind the scenes, where 
she was just undressed, and stood naked as a little Cupid before the 
looking-glass. Her part was finished for the night; and as soon as she 
was dressed again I took her In my arms, and brought 'l'enfant prodige,' 
as she was called in the bills, in triumph to the box. After the first 
caresses were over, the little creature was the most attentive spectator of 
the performance among us, though one might have thought she had enough 
ol it every day. Only a paper of sweetmeats which I gave her had power 
to distract her attention for a few minutes. She sat for some time on the 
lap of the elder Miss , who put her down rather suddenly, and acci- 
dentally scratched the child's arm against a pin in her dress, so as to 
draw blood. We were all afraid she would cry; but the miniature 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 433 

Napoleon was only angry, beat the offender as hard as she could, and 
cried out indignantly, " Fy, for shame, you stung me like a bee!" With 
that she sprung on the lap of the younger, laid her little arms over the 
edge of the box, and fixed her eyes again with undisturbed attention on 

the Siege of Saragossa. Between the acts Lady C , to whom I had 

related the laughable mistake concerning me in Limerick, told her I was 
Napoleon's son. She turned quickly round, looked at me fixedly for 
a while, and then exclaimed with the most serious 'grandezza,' "0, I 
have played your father very often, and always gained uncommon ap- 
plause by it." Thus natural, droll, and completely free from embarrass- 
ment, the little thing captivated us all: and we saw with regret the end 
of the performance approaching — the signal for us to part with her. She 
would not let anybody but me carry her down, because I had brought 
her up. When we arrived behind the scenes, where every place was 
filled with horses, I scarcely knew how we should get through. She 
cried out eagerly, while she slapped my arm impatiently with her little 
velvet hand, "Come, are you afraid? only do you go on, I'll keep the 
horses in order;" and so saying she distributed to the right and left, 
blows on the noses of her old acquaintances, who obediently made way 
for us to pass. "Now set me down!" said she; and scarcely did her 
feet touch the ground, when with the swiftness of a little hare she flew 
across the back part of the stage, and vanished in the crowd. Children 
are certainly the most graceful of all creatures when they are not crippled 
and distorted by education: seldom, however, does so much genuine 
nature appear on the stage, yet seldomer perhaps on the theatre of the 
great world. 

Nov. ISth. 
I forgot to mention to you that I have met O'Connell again here. I 
heard him speak at the meetings of the Catholic Association, the present 
Irish Parliament, which I visited to-day for the second time. I was re- 
ceived, as a well-disposed foreigner, with applause, and O'Connell imme- 
diately made room for me between himself and Lord C . The room 

is not very large, and as dirty as the English House of Commons. Here 
too every man keeps his hat on, except while he is speaking: here too are 
good and bad orators; but certainly occasionally less dignified manners 
than there. The heat was suffocating, and I had to sit out five hours; but 
the debate was so interesting that I scarcely remarked the annoyances. 
O'Connell was undoubtedly the best speaker. Although idolized by the 
greater number, he was severely attacked by several, and defended him- 
self with equal address and moderation: on the other hand, he assailed 
the Government without reserve; and in my opinion in too strong expres- 
sions. It was easy to perceive that much intrigue and several firmly 
united parties, whose minds were made up beforehand, were to be found 
here, as in other bodies of the like kind, and consequently that the dis- 
cussion was often only a sort of sham-fight. The leaders at least had how- 
ever studied their parts well. The three most prominent speakers are 
O'Connell, Shiel, and Lawless. Mr. Fin and Mr. Ford also spoke well, 
and with great dignity of manner. Shiel is a man of the world, and has 
even more ease in society than O'Connell: but as a speaker he appeared 
to me too affected, too artificial; and all he said, too much got up; his 
manner was theatrical, and there was no real feeling in the « delivery' of 
his speech, as the English expressively call it. I am not surprised that, 

55 



434 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

in spite of his undoubted talents, he is so much less popular than O'Ccn- 
nell. Both are very vain, but the vanity of O'Connell is more frank, 
more confiding, and sooner satisfied; that of Shiel, irritable, sore, and 
gloomy. The one is therefore, with reference to his own party, steeped 
in honey; the other in gall; and the latter, though contending for the same 
cause, is evidently jealous of his colleague, whom he vainly thinks to sur- 
pass. Mr. L s is the Don Quixote of the Association. His fine head 

and white hair, his wild but noble dignity, and his magnificent voice, ex- 
cite an expectation of something extraordinary when he rises: but the 
speech, which commences in an earnest tone, soon falls into the most in- 
credible extravagancies, and sometimes into total absurdity, in which 
friend and foe are assailed with equal fury. He is therefore little heeded; 
laughed at when he rages like King Lear, unmindful of his audience, and 
of all that is passing around him. The dominant party, however, use him 
to make a noise when they want him. To-day he outdid himself to such 
a degree in the flight he took, that he suddenly erected the standard of 
Deism in the midst of the Catholic, arch-Catholic Association. Perhaps, 
indeed, this was only done to give occasion to O'Connell to call him in- 
dignantly to order, and to bring in a pious tirade; for on the orator's ros- 
trum as on the tub, on the throne as in the puppet-show booth, clap-traps 
are necessary. 

I rested myself this evening in the accustomed place. ' Tableaux' were 
again the order of the day. I had to appear successively as Brutus, an 
Asiatic Jew, Francis the. First, and Saladin. Miss J was a capti- 
vating little fellow as a student of Alcala; and her eldest sister, as a fair 
slave, a welcome companion to Saladin. As the beautiful Rebecca she 
also assorted not ill with the Oriental Jew. All these metamorphoses 
were accomplished by the mother with the help only of four candles, two 
looking-glasses, a few shawls and coloured handkerchiefs, a burnt cork, 
a pot of rouge, and different heads of hair. Yet Talma could not have 
dressed Brutus better, nor altered the physiognomy more completely, 
than with these slight materials Lady C had the skill to do. 

To conclude, we drew caricatures, and at my request each sister at- 
tempted a portrait of the other. Both succeeded very well, and are now 
placed in my gallery. 

1 Nov. 13///. 

To-day I found myself compelled to do something which was very dis- 
agreeable to me, and which I had long deferred; I was obliged to resort 
to my 'grand expedient,' in order to conquer my aversion. You will 
laugh when I tell you what this is; but I find it a powerful aid in great 
things as well as in small. The truth is, there are few men who are not 
sometimes capricious, and yet oftener vacillating. Finding that I am not 
better than others in this respect, I invented a remedy of ray own, a sort 
of artificial resolution respecting things which are difficult of perform- 
ance, — a means of securing that firmness in myself which I might other- 
wise want, and which man is generally obliged to sustain by some exter- 
nal prop.* My device then is this: — I give my word of honour most so- 

• Even religion and morality do not reach all the intricate circumstances and cases 
which occur in human society: — witness that conventional honour which is fre- 
quently at war with both, and whose laws are yet obeyed by the best and wisest of 
men. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 435 

lemnly to myself, to do, or to leave undone, this or that. I am of course 
extremely cautious and discreet in the use ot this expedient, and exercise 
great deliberation before I resolve upon it; but when once it is done, even 
if I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken, I hold it to be 
perfectly irrevocable, whatever inconveniences I foresee likely to result. 
And I feel great satisfaction and tranquillity in being subject to such an 
immutable law. If I were capable of breaking it after such mature con- 
sideration, I should lose all respect for myself; — and what man of sense 
would not prefer death to such an alternative? for death is only a neces- 
sity of nature, and consequently not an evil; — it appears to us so only in 
connexion with our present existence; that is to say, the instinct of self- 
preservation recoils from death; but reason, which is eternal, sees it in its 
true form, as a mere transition from one state to another. But a convic- 
tion of one's own unconquerable weakness is a feeling which must em- 
bitter the whole of life. It is therefore better, if it comes to the struggle, 
to give up existence for the present with a feeling of inward triumph, than 
to crawl on with a chronic disease of the soul. 1 am not made dependent 
by my promise; on the contrary, it is just that which maintains my inde- 
pendence. So long as my persuasion is not firm and complete, the mys- 
terious formula is not pronounced; but when once that has taken place, 
no alteration in my own views — nothing short of physical impossibility — 
must, for the welfare of my soul, alter my will. But whilst I thus form 
to myself a firm support in the most extreme cases, do you not see that I 
also possess a formidable weapon of attack, if I were compelled to use it, 
however small and inconsiderable the means may appear to many? I, on 
the contrary, find something very satisfactory in the thought, that man 
has the power of framing such props and such weapons out of the most 
trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force of his will, 
which hereby truty deserves the name of omnipotent. I cannot answer for 
it that this "reasoning will not appear to you, dear Julia, distorted and 
blameworthy: indeed it is not made for a woman; while on the other hand 
a completely powerful mind would perhaps as little stand in need of it. 
Every man must however manage himself according to his own nature; 
and as no one has yet found the art of making a reed grow like an oak, 
or a cabbage like a pine-apple, so must men, as the common but wise pro- 
verb has it, cut their coat according to their cloth.* Happy is he who does 
not trust himself beyond his strength ! But without being so tragical about 
the matter, this grand expedient is of admirable use in trifles. For exam- 
ple, to fulfil tedious, irksome duties of society with the resignation of a 
calm victim, — to conquer indolence so as to get vigorously through some 
lon» deferred work, — to impose upon oneself some wholesome restraint, 
and thus heighten one's enjoyment afterwards, — and many, many more 
such cases, which this occasionally sublime, but generally childish life 
presents. 

After dinner, to drive away blue devils, I took a long ride into the 
country towards the mountains. After riding about twelve miles I came 
to a bare region of interminable bog extending in all directions. You 
would have thought yourself a hundred miles from any capital. The cha- 
racter of the country was not wild, not so desert as a plain of sand, but 
awfully void, lonely, and monotonous. One single wretched cabin was 
visible, but in ruins, and uninhabited; and a white footpath winded along 
toilfully through the brown heather, like a huge worm. The whole ground 

• Nach ihrer Decke strecken. 



436 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

was lightly powdered with snow, and the wind blew icy cold over the 
bare heights. Nevertheless the melancholy of the scene had such a strange 
attraction for me, that necessity alone made me turn my horse's head 
homewards. Nearer to Dublin I found an isolated mountain, on which 
was a strange caprice; — a house built in imitation of a rock; and in fact 
so like one, that it deceived me till I saw the entrance. I reached my 
inn by moonlight, with a face burning with the keen air. I had invited 
Father L'Estrange to dine with me, ' car j'aime les pretres, comrae Vol- 
taire la Bible, malgre tout ce que j'en dis.' 

I found too a letter from you; but I must complain that you do not 
write to me sufficiently in detail. Do consider that every trifle from home 
is precious. Whether my favourite horse is well; whether my sweet little 
friend the parroquet sometimes calls on my name; whether your domestic 
tyrant Fancy is more or less naughty; whether the parrots are 'in good 
spirits,' the new plantations thriving, the visitors to the baths gay; — all 
these particulars have an extraordinary interest at a distance of some hun- 
dreds of miles. But I see clearly that if I have a mind to know all these 
things I must take you by surprise, if it be but for one day. You know 
that I hate all scenes and solemnities, all tumultuous meetings, and all 
leave-takings; ' un beau matin' therefore you will find me comfortably 
established in your breakfast-room, where I shall receive you with a smile, 
as if my long journey had been but a dream; ' et toute la vie, helas! est 
elle autre chose?' Seriously, we ought to learn to take all these things 
much more coolly and easily than we fancy possible. — An English dandy 
may serve you as an admirable model. His best friend and comrade was 
going to India; and in his emotion at taking leave of him, was going to 
grasp both his hands, and to shake them perhaps for the last time: the 
'Incroyable,' half warding him off*, held out the tip of his little linger to 
him, while he lisped smiling, " Strange and horridly fatiguing English 
custom, for two men to move each other's arms up and down like the 
handle of a pump!" 

Your portrait did not give me so much pleasure as it ought. The fea- 
tures are much too hard, and must be ' softened' before it can pass as a 
representative of the original, — whose image, however, is too vividly 
pressed on my heart to want any refreshing. 

Your ever faithful L . 



LETTER XLII. 

Dublin, November 20th, 1828. 
Beloved Friend, 

I frequently meet a man here, B — H — , whose. company is highly 
interesting to me. Although a clergyman, he is one of the few independent 
thinkers who are able to throw off' the tyranny of early impressions and 
old habits, and to see by the light of reason, in other words, of divine re- 
velation, alone. In his opinion, too, a crisis in religious affairs is at hand. 
"Ecclesiastical establishments," said he to-day, "are manifestly the 
monstrous offspring of the sublime and the ridiculous, of eternal truth and 
dark ignorance, of genuine philosophy and gross idolatry. The more men 
learn, the more science enables us to understand external nature and the 
nature of our own being by well-established facts, the milder, the more 
moral will our manners as well as our governments become. More slowly, 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 437 

religions will follow. Even the Christian religion, though in its origin 
one of the mightiest efforts towards the amelioration of mankind, ever 
prompted by the deepest meditation, and the purest heart has, as the his- 
tory of our church shows in almost every page since its establishment, de- 
luged the world a hundred times with blood, and given birth to a succes- 
sion of the most frantic absurdities; while philosophy and science have 
continually acted as humanizers, without ever demanding such victims, 
or committing such outrages. The question is, whether Newton, in dis- 
covering the secrets of Heaven, — whether the inventors of the compass 
or the printing-press, — have not done more for mankind, i. e. more to 
further the progress of civilization, than any of the numerous founders of 
sects and religions, who require that men should swear exclusive alle- 
giance to them. There may, indeed, come a time in which religion and 
poetry will be regarded as sisters, — in which a religion of state will ap- 
pear as ludicrous as a poetry of state. Were I a Turk, I should say to 
myself, It is certainly difficult to get so entirely free of all the prejudices 
and superstitions of childhood, as to regard the persuasion of millions, 
with a firm unshaken eye, as folly: but having once convinced myself that 
it is so, I will not remain a Turk. As Christian, I say, I will adhere to 
the pure doctrine which my reason can revere; but I will have the courage 
to reject the mass of unpoetical fables, and all the misrepresentations and 
disfigurements of the time of its birth, and still more the bloody and fero- 
cious heathenism incorporated with it by succeeding ages, even though 
two hundred millions of men should sincerely receive them as divine, on 
the authority of men erring as themselves. This was the principle on 
which Luther acted, when he took the first steps towards Reform; but 
the light which he purified stands greatly in need of a fresh cleansing. 
Honour and reverence be to the churchman who shall be great and pure- 
minded enough to feel himself called to this god-like work! who shall en- 
deavour to execute it without compromise or fear of men, though the mul- 
titude of hypocrites and pharisees will cry out against him; for history 
clearly shows that he has nothing else to expect. 

" Has it not ever been the few who have seen and acknowledged the 
better and the true? Has it not ever been the many who have proscribed 
and persecuted them? Was truth on the side of the fanatical herd who 
gave the poison-cup to Socrates? or of that which crucified Jesus? or of 
that which burnt Huss? No; it was not till centuries afterwards that the 
multitude embraced the persecuted faith, and hardened themselves into 
the same stubborn and furious orthodoxy for it, which they had displayed 
against it. The want of a religion is unquestionably one of the most im- 
perious cravings of our nature, especially where laws and institutions are 
yet in their infancy. He who cannot frame one for himself, must receive 
the form of it from others: — such will always be the many. This easily 
explains the grounds upon which the power of the church and the priest- 
hood must ever rest, and why men are thus kept in leading-strings for 
hundreds, nay thousands of years. But to strengthen and perpetuate this 
power, knowledge must always be repressed in favour of faith. Where 
inquiry is free, one fraud after another disappears, though slowly; — light 
bursts at length even upon the darkest corner. When this point is once 
reached, the fetters laid upon conscience are broken, and every individual 
demands a boundless field for the exercise of his faith and of his judg- 
ment. Absolute sultans, fat dervises, and haughty satraps, must then fall 
together, like the dead lees in generous wine. How miserable a figure 
do those make, who, at the dawn of such a day, think they can stop the 



438 \ LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

rising of the sun by turning their backs upon it, or by holding their anti- 
quated, decayed, and worm-eaten screen, which is no longer in a state to 
exclude even a moonbeam, before their eyes! They may for a while suc- 
ceed in keeping themselves in the shade, but they can-not shroud the bright 
forehead of the day. On the contrary, their struggles, as impotent as 
they are passionate, are the surest harbingers of its inevitable approach." 

I agree, for the most part, with B H ; but whether his sanguine 

hopes will so soon, or indeed ever on this earth, be realized, is another 
question. That the world can no longer be governed on Jesuitical prin- 
ciples, and that the liberty of the press, if firmly maintained, works, and 
will work, incalculable wonders, I am well convinced: — but men will 
still be men, and force and fraud will, I fear, ever predominate over 
reason. 

In the forenoon I visited the courts of justice with Father L'Estrange, 
to hear the military-looking O'Connell plead, in his powdered long-tailed 
wig, black gown, and bands. We afterwards went to the meeting of the 
Association, to see the great Agitator in a totally different character. The 
meeting was very stormy. Mr. L s spoke like a madman, and at- 
tacked O'Connell himself so violently that he almost lost his wonted dig- 
nity. He made an admirable reply; though he strained too much after 
wit, which was not always in the best taste. After this, a dozen spoke 
at once. The secretary called to order, but had nqt authority enough to 
enforce obedience. In short, the scene began to be rather indecorous, 
till at last a handsome young man with enormous whiskers and an 'outre' 
dress, (the dandy of the Association,) sprang on the table, and uttered a 
thundering speech which obtained great applause, and thus restored 
peace. 

I dined at Lady M 's. She had invited me by a note, such as I 

have received a dozen of during my stay here: — I must mention them as 
characteristic, for I never in my life saw worse calligraphy or a more 
negligent style from a lady's pen. The aim of the great authoress was 
manifest; — to announce the most perfect 'insouciance,' the most entire 
' abandon,' in the affairs of ordinary life; just as the great solo dancers in 
Paris affect to walk with their toes turned in, that they may not betray 

the dancer by profession. At table Lady M , with her aid-de-camp 

K. CI , ' faisoient les frais d'esprit oblige.' Mr. Shiel, too, appeared 

in the character of an agreeable man of the world. The most amusing 
part of the entertainment, however, was the acting of proverbs by Lady 

M and her sister, who both extemporized admirably in French. 

Among others, they performed ' Love me, love my dog,' as follows: 

Dramatis personae: — Lady M , an old coquette; Lady C , an 

Irish ' fortune-hunter;' her eldest daughter, the French femme-de-cham- 
bre; the youngest, a captain of the Guards, a lover of the lady. Scene 
the first: — Lady M with her maid at her toilet. Confidential ad- 
vice of Josephine, in the course of which she betrays various laughable 
secrets of the toilet. Distress of the coquette at the first appearance of 
wrinkles. Assurances of the Abigail that, by candle-light, nobody can 
be handsomer. As a proof of this, the various lovers are adduced, and 
love-affairs of former times recapitulated. " La comtesse convient de 
ses conquetes," and with much humour draws a picture of her triumphs. 
" Chut!" cries the waiting-maid, "j'entends le capitaine." This per- 
sonage, an exclusive, enters with great ' fracas,' carrying a little dog 
under his arm, and after some tender compliments tells her that he is 
obliged to rejoin his regiment, and wishes to leave her his little Fidele, 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 439 

that the fair countess may never forget to remain ' fidele' to him. Bur- 
lesque protestations, sobs, embraces, farewells. Scarcely is the captain 
gone, when the Irishman appears with a marriage-contract in his hand, 
by which the countess is to assign over her whole fortune to him. Like 
a man well versed in womankind, he treats her somewhat cavalierly, 
though with a display of passion, so that after a feeble defence and a lit- 
tle scene, she consents. Meanwhile the Irishman observes the little dog, 
and asks with some surprise whose it is. She stammers out a sort of apo- 
logetic answer. O'Connor MacFarlane now plays the part of the infu- 
riate jealous lover. The women vainly attempt to appease him; he 
storms, and insists on the instant dismissal of the intruder. The countess 
makes an attempt to faint — but all is in vain; even Josephine, who during 
the discussion of the marriage-contract has just received a purse behind 
her mistress' back, takes the part of the incensed Irishman, who with one 
hand holds back his lady, and with the other at length throws the unfor- 
tunate little dog out at the door. But, alas! at this very moment the 
captain returns to bring the collar which he had forgotten, and Fidele 
jumps into his arms. The terrified women take to flight; the men mea- 
sure each other with their eyes. O'Connor MacFarlane utters dreadful 
menaces; but the captain draws his sword, and his antagonist jumps out 
at the window, — The skeleton is meagre; but the spirit, humour, and 
wit, by which it was filled out, rendered it extremely entertaining. The 
imperfections of the costume made it only more piquant. The ladies, 
for instance, had put on a coat and waistcoat over their own dresses, and 
stuck a hat on their heads; their swords were riding-whips, and Fidele 
a muff. 

Lady M afterwards related to me many interesting circumstances 

respecting the celebrated Miss O'Neil, whom, as you know, I regard as 
the greatest dramatic artist it has ever fallen to my lot to admire. She 
said that this extraordinary young woman, who from the very com- 
mencement of her career had given evidence of the highest genius, re- 
mained utterly neglected at the theatre in Dublin, where she performed 
for some years. She was at that time so poor, that when she returned 
home at night after the greatest exertions, she found no other refresh- 
ment than a plate of potatoes and a miserable bed which she shared with 

three sisters. Lady M once visited her, and found the poor girl 

mending her two pair of old stockings, which she was obliged to wash 

daily for her appearance on the stage. Lady M now procured for 

her various articles of dress, and took upon herself in some degree the 
care of her toilet, which had been extremely neglected. She obtained 
more applause after this, though still but little. At this time one of the 
managers of the London theatres accidentally came to Dublin, saw her, 
and had the good taste and judgment immediately to engage her for the 
metropolis. Here she at once produced the most extraordinary sensa- 
tion; and from a poor unknown young actress, rose in one moment to be 
the first star of the theatrical firmament of England. I still remember 
her acting with rapture: I have never since been able to endure the part 
of Juliet, played even by our best actresses; all appear to me stiff; af- 
fected, unnatural. One must have seen the whole thread of the life of 
the Shakspearian Juliet thus spun before one's eyes to conceive the effect. 
At first, it was only the sportive youthful joyousness of the caressing 
child: then, when awakened by love, a new sun appeared to rise upon 
her; all her attitudes and movements assumed a more soft, voluptuous 
air; her countenance, her whole person became radiant, — she was the 



440 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

southern maiden devoting her whole soul and life to her beloved with all 
the fire of her clime. Thus did she burst into the loveliest and richest 
blossom; — but care and sorrow soon ripened the noble fruit before our 
eyes. The most imposing dignity, the deepest conjugal tenderness, the 
firmest resolve in extremity, now took the place of glowing passion, of 
the quick sense which seemed framed but to enjoy: — and how was her 
despair depicted at the last, when all was lost! How fearful, how heart- 
rending, how true, and yet how ever beautiful, did she know how to rise 
even to the very last moment! Certain of her aim, she sometimes ven- 
tured to the very utmost verge of her art, and did what no other could 
have attempted without falling into the ridiculous: but in her, it was just 
these efforts which operated as electric shocks. Her madness and death 
in Belvidera, for instance, had such a terrific physical truth, that the 
sight of it was hardly endurable; and yet it was only the agony of the 
soul, showing through every fibre of her body, which had an effect so 
powerful, so almost annihilating, on the spectator. I remember well that 
on the evening in which I saw that, 1 remained wholly insensible to any 
physical impression; and even the next morning, when I awoke, wept 
bitterly over Belvidera's fate. I was certainly very young then, but my 
feelings were those of many; and it was a striking fact, that Germans, 
Frenchmen, and Italians, were equally enthusiastic admirers of her; 
though, generally speaking, one must have a thorough knowledge of the 
language and character of the nation, to feel perfectly satisfied with its 
actors. She, however, had no trace of mannerism; it was only human 
nature in its truest and noblest form, which spoke to every human heart. 
She could not be properly called- beautiful; yet she had a stately person, 
noble shoulders and arms, and beautiful hair. But her peculiar charm 
was that indefinable pathetic expression which at the first glance moved 
the inmost feelings of the heart. In such features, you think you dis- 
cover the trace of every passion, though an unearthly calm is spread over 
them like ice over a volcano. 

The inhabitants of Dublin had long remained blind to so much genius 
and talent; but the year after, when the celebrated, admired, adored Miss 
O'Neil returned from London to act a few of her most popular parts, the 
infectious enchantment was so powerful, that not only the whole public 
was in the greatest state of tumult and agitation, but many ladies were 
carried out from the theatre fainting. One became really insane from wit- 
nessing Belvidera's madness, and actually died in a mad-house. Really 
such facts as these render the enthusiasm of the many almost dis 
gusting. 

This great actress was also distinguished for her remarkably amiable 
character: she entirely supported her family, even at the time of her 
greatest poverty. She made her first appearance at a little private thea- 
tre in the country: this was afterwards shut, and only occasionally used 
by a dilettanti company, when the profits of their performance were given 
to the poor of the county. They wrote to Miss O'Neil, who was then in 
England, and begged her to consecrate this place, which had witnessed 
her first efforts, by the last triumph of her genius, now the admiration of 
the three kingdoms; whatever terms she might propose would be agreed 
to. She replied, that she felt herself extremely flattered and honoured by 
the request; but that so far from accepting any pecuniary compensation, 
she would gladly seize the opportunity of offering this tribute to the cra- 
dle of her humble talents. Only on this condition, and that of being al- 
lowed to contribute her mite to her poor countrymen, would she appear 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 441 

on the day appointed — I was assured by eye-witnesses that they had 
never seen a more perfect piece of acting than her's on this occasion. 
Never had Miss O'Neil been better supported, — never did she so surpass 
herself. It was a curious accident that a young Irish gentleman of fortune 
fell in love with her that very day, and shortly after married her. He robbed 
the public of an inestimable treasure; but who can blame him? ' Miss 
O'Neil has now several children, is still charming, and lives happily on 
her husband's property. She has never trodden a stage, either public or 
private, since her marriage. 

[The conclusion of this letter, which, as it appears from the beginning 
of the following one, contains a description of some public entertainments 
and occurrences, is missing.] 



LETTER XLIII. 

Dublin, December 7th, 1828. 
Dear JLulia, 

The descriptions of public dinners and the * * * 

* * * * * * * * * * 

are now at an end, and I must conduct you to a breakfast at the Post- 
office. The Director, Sir Edward Lee, a very agreeable and accomplish- 
ed man, who gave the entertainment, first conducted us, in company with 
a number of elegant ladies, through the various offices * pour nous faire 
gagner de l'appetit.' In one of them, called the ' Dead Letter Office,' a 
very strange incident occurred in our presence. All letters, the address 
of which is unintelligible, or which are addressed to persons who cannot 
be discovered, are taken into this office, where they are opened at the 
end of a fortnight, and, if they contain nothing important, burnt. This 
seems to me rather a barbarous custom, since many a heart might be 
broken from the loss of what a Post-office clerk might think ' of no im- 
portance.' So it is, however, and we found three men busied in the ope- 
ration. Several of us seized these doomed epistles, and turned them over 
with great curiosity, when the clerk who stood nearest to-"me took up 
rather a large packet on which there was no address whatever, only the 
post-mark of an Irish country town. How great was his surprise and that 
of all of us, when on opening it we saw not a single line of writing, but 
£2700 in bank-notes! This, at least, appeared 'of importance' to all, 
and an order was immediately given to write to the town in question to 
make inquiry about it. 

In the evening I went to pay the * nightingales' a visit, but found them 
flown, and only their father at home, with whom I had a scientific con- 
versation. He showed me several curious newly-invented instruments; — 
one among them for ascertaining the exact strength of the lungs, and 
therefore invaluable in consumptive diseases. He told me that a person 
high in office was given over last year by all of the most eminent physi- 
cians in Dublin, as far gone in pulmonary consumption. Believing his 
danger to be imminent, he had made up his mind to give up his place, 
and to go to Montpellier, as the only means of prolonging his life. Sir 

A was at last consulted, and resolved to try this instrument, which 

he had just received from London. Scarcely could he believed his eyes 

56 



442 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

when he found on experiment ihat the lungs of the patient were two de- 
grees stronger than his own, — he being in perfect health. The disease 
was now discovered to be in the liver, though it had exhibited every 
symptom of consumption; and in four months the patient was entire- 
ly cured, and kept his lucrative place which he had determined to 
give up. 

I shall not describe to you the various instruments of torture which I 
saw; ' tant pis pour l'humanite, qu'il en faut tant.' A prettier thing was 
a barometer, in the figure of a lady, who at the approach of bad weather 
holds up her umbrella, in a hard rain opens it, and in settled fine weather 
uses it as a walking-stick. To use a lady as a continually changing 
prophet of weather. ' Quelle insolence!' 

December 8th. 

Sir A , who has a place in the Bank, showed that building to me 

this morning. The edifice is fine, and formerly served as a place of meet- 
ing for both houses of the Irish Parliament, whose restoration is now so 
ardently desired. The thing most worth seeing is the printing of bank- 
notes. The whole machinery is moved by a magnificent steam-engine, 
while a smaller one fills the boiler with water and the furnace with coals, 
so that human assistance is scarcely wanted. In the first room the print- 
ing ink is prepared; in the next the bank-notes recieve their various marks 
and ornaments. This process is very rapidly performed. Only one man 
is employed at each press; and while he places the blank papers, one after 
another, under the stamp, the number of printed notes marks itself in the 
inside of a closed box. In the next room they are numbered. This is 
done on a small chest; and the machinery numbers them, as if by invisi- 
ble hands, from one to a thousand. The man employed there has nothing 
to do but to blacken the numbers as they come out with printer's ink, 
and to lay the notes in their proper order. All the rest is accomplished 
by the machine. 

Every note which returns to the Bank after circulation is immediately 
torn, and kept seven years, at the expiration of which time it is burnt. 
This last operation leaves a residuum of indigo, copper, and the materials 
of the paper, which looks like metal, and glitters with all the colours of 
the rainbow. Of course many hundred notes go to make up an ounce of 
this substance, of which I carried away a beautiful piece. 

We afterwards ascended the roof of this great building, a sort of world 
in miniature, whence, like the ' Diable Boiteux,' we could see into the 
surrounding houses; but at length so confused ourselves, that we thought 
we should need Ariadne's clue to enable us to find our way down again. 

I arrived too late, in consequence, at dinner at Sir E L 's; a 

thing which is not taken so ill in England as with us. 

Dec. 9th. 
Lord Howth invited me to a stag-hunt, whence I am just returned, 
equally tired and pleased. My lessons in Cashel were now of great use 
to me, for Lord Howth is one of the best and most determined riders in 
Great Britain. He had given me a very good horse, in spite of which I 
fell twice: this also happened once to Lord Howth himself, and I follow- 
ed him so well that I think I brought no discredit on our cavalry. At 
length more than two-thirds of our fifty red-coats were missing. I was 
particularly struck with an officer who had lost an arm, and nevertheless 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 4 43 

was one of the first: his admirable horse had not refused or missed a 
single leap. 

This sort of hunt is a very agreeable diversion now and then; but how 
a man can devote himself to so utterly utiintellectual an amusement three 
times a week, for six months of every year, and always pursue it with the 
same passion, does, I own, remain unintelligible to me. What, besides, 
makes stag-hunting much less interesting in England than on the conti- 
nent, is, that the stags are tame, and are trained to the sport like race- 
horses. They are brought to the place of rendezvous in a kind of box, 
and there turned out. When they have run a certain distance, the hunt 
begins, and before it ends the hounds are called off, and the stag is put 
into the box again and kept for another hunt. Is not this horribly prosaic, 
and scarcely compensated by the 'agrement' of being in continual risk of 
breaking one's neck over a wide ditch, or one's head against a high wall ? 

December 10th. 
For some weeks past I have been a frequent visitor at the Gymnastic 
Academy. These exercises are become very fashionable in Great Britain 
and Ireland. Certainly they are of inestimable value in the training of 
youth; they are a highly improved Turnen,* but without politics. When 
one considers what facilities are now at hand for the physical as well a9 
moral education of man; how those whom nature has misshapen are placed 
within cases of iron till they are transformed into Apollos; how noses and 
ears are created; and how academies are daily advertised in the news- 
papers, in which the most profound erudition is engaged to be communi- 
cated in three years, t — one really longs to be a child again, that one might 
come in for a share of all these advantages. It appears as if the law of 
gravitation operated in the moral as well as in the physical world, and 
that ' the march of intellect' went on in an increasing ratio like the ra- 
pidity of a falling cannon-ball. A few more political revolutions in Europe, 
the perfecting of steam-power for soul and body, and God knows what 
we may get to, even without the discovery of the art of steering air-bal- 
loons. But to return to the Gymnasium, the utility of which, at least, is 
undoubted. It strengthens the frame to such a degree, and imparts such 
agility to the limbs, that a man really doubles or trebles his existence by 
it. It is literally the fact, that I saw a young man, the arch of whose 
breast, after an uninterrupted practice of three months, had increased 
seven inches; the muscles of his arms and thighs had at the same time en- 
larged to three times their volume, and were as hard as iron. But even 
much older people, — men of sixty, — though they cannot expect to effect 
such changes, may strengthen themselves very considerably by moderate 
exercise in the gymnasium. I constantly found men of this age, who 
played their part very well among the young ones who had but recently 
begun. Some perseverance is however necessary; for the older a man is, 
the more painful and fatiguing is the beginning. Many feel themselves 
for months as if they had been on the rack, or were set fast with universal 
rheumatism. A Frenchman was at the head of the establishment, although 
his predecessor had sacrificed himself, two years before, to the glory of 

• The German name for the system of gymnastics introduced by the celebrated 
Dr. Jahn, and mixed up, by the young men who cultivated them, with the political 
opinions designated by the governments as • Demagogic* — Trans. 

■{-•The Prussian Landwehr system also forms perfect soldiers, horse or foot, in two 
years.— Editob. 



444 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

his art: his name was Beaujeu. He was endeavouring to show two ladies, 
(for there are also feminine gymnastics,) how easy exercise No. 7. was. 
The pole broke, and so did, in consequence of his fall, his spine. He 
died in a few hours; and, with an elevation and enthusiasm worthy of a 
greater cause, exclaimed with his last breath, " Voila le coup de grace 
pour la gymnastique en Irlande." His prediction, however, was not 
fulfilled, for both gentlemen and ladies are more gymnastically-minded 
than ever. 

December \Ath. 
As I have been unwell for several days and unable to go out, I have no 
interesting news to give you. You must therefore receive with indulgence 
a few detached thoughts, the offspring of solitude; or if they tire you, 
leave them unread. 

PARLOUR PHILOSOPHY. 

What is good or evil fortune? As the former has seldom fallen to my 
lot, I have often proposed the question to myself. Blind and accidental, 
it certainly is not; but necessary, and part of a series, like every thing 
else in the universe, though its causes do not always depend on ourselves. 
How far, however, we really have it in our power to bring it on ourselves, 
is a salutary inquiry for every one. Lucky and unlucky occasions pre- 
sent themselves to every man in the course of his life; and the art of 
seizing the one and averting the other with address, is commonly what 
procures for a man the reputation of fortunate. It cannot however be 
denied that, in the case of some men, the most powerful and the wisest 
combinations continually fail, by what we call accident; nay, that there 
is a sort of secret foreboding or presentiment, which gives us the dim 
feeling that our project will not succeed. I have often been tempted to 
think that luckiness and unluckiness are a sort of subjective properties 
which we bring with us into the world, like health, strength, a finely or- 
ganized brain, and so on; and whose preponderating power must always 
attract things magnetically to themselves. Like all other properties, this 
of luckiness may be cultivated or let to lie dormant, may be increased or 
diminished. The will does much; and thence the proverbs, Nothing ven- 
ture nothing have, (Wagen gewinnt:) Boldness and luck go together, 
(Kuhnheit gehb'rt zum Gliick.) It is also observable that luckiness, like 
the other faculties, falls off with age, that is, with the vigour of the mate- 
rial. This is certainly not the consequence of weaker or more ill-advised 
plans or rules, but appears truly to be the decline of a secret power which, 
so long as it is young and vigorous, governs fortune, but in later years is 
no longer able to hold her in. High play affords very good studies on this 
subject; and perhaps this is the only poetical side of that dangerous pas- 
sion: for nothing affords so true a picture of life as the hazard -table; no- 
thing affords a better criterion to the observer, by which to try his own 
character, and that of others. All rules which avail in the struggle of 
life, avail also in this; and penetration combined with energy is always 
sure, if not to conquer, at least to make a very able defence. But if it is 
combined with the talent or gift of luckiness, a sort of Napoleon of the 
gaming-table is the result. I am not now speaking of that class of gentle- 
men 'qui corrigent la fortune.' But even here the resemblance is still 
true: for how often in the world do you meet men who govern fortune by 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 445 

fraud? — the most unfortunate, be it said by the by, of all speculators. 
Their occupation is truly drawing water in a sieve; the collecting of rot- 
ten nuts. For what is enjoyment without security? and what can outward 
fortune avail where the internal equilibrium is destroyed? 

There are men who, although endowed with distinguished qualities, 
never know how to make them available in the world, unless they have 
been from the beginning of their career placed by fate in their right posi- 
tion. They can never reach it by their own efforts; because a too feminine 
fancy, liable to the constant impression of extraneous forms, prevents 
them from seeing things as they really are, and causes them to live in a 
world of airy floating phantasms. They set about their projects with ar- 
dour and talent; but their fancy hurries after, mounted on her poetical 
steed, and conducts them so rapidly through her kingdom of dreams, to 
their end, that they can no longer endure the slow and weary journey 
through the difficulties and obstacles of the real road. Thus they suiter 
one project after another to fall to the ground before it has attained to 
maturity. And yet, like every thing else in the world, this unfortunate 
turn of mind has its advantages. It prevents a man, indeed, from making 
his fortune, as it is commonly called, but affords incalculable comfort un- 
der misfortune, and an elasticity of spirit that nothing can entirely crush,— 
for the race of pleasure-giving creatures of the imagination is absolutely 
inexhaustible. A whole city of castles in the air is always at the command 
of mortals of this class, and they enjoy, in hope, an everlasting variety of 
realities. Such people may be of infinite use to other more sedate, re- 
flecting, and matter-of-fact men, if these latter do but understand the art 
of awakening their enthusiasm. Their intellectual faculties derive from a 
positive steady purpose, and from the constraint which it imposes, a de- 
gree of constancy and persevering energy which their own interest could 
never have inspired; and their ardour is more durable for the good of 
others than for their own. From similar causes, if they are placed by 
some superior power on the summit of the hill from the commencement 
of their lives, they will accomplish great things by themselves; for in this 
case the most grand and varied materials are already furnished; and along 
with them, the enthusiasm which persons of this character want, is pro- 
duced, and fixed on some adequate and determinate object. There is no- 
thing entirely new, uncertain, and baseless to create or to found; — only 
to employ, to improve, to elevate, to adorn, what already lies under their 
eye and hand, with the acuteness and address of a skilful artist. From 
such an eminence, which is their proper station, their keen, far-sighted 
glance, supported by a thousand executive heads and hands, strengthened 
by their own inward poetic eye, will reach further than that of more every- 
day natures. But at the foot or on the slope of the hill this acuteness of 
the mental sight is of no use to them, because their horizon is bounded; 
and for climbing the toilsome ascent, their indolent limbs will not serve 
them, nor could they resist the airy phantoms which would tempt them 
from their path. They live and die, therefore, on the hill, without ever 
reaching its summit, and consequently without ever being fully conscious 
of their own power. Of such men, the well-known saying might be re- 
versed, and we might say with truth, ' Tel brille au premier rang qui 
s'eclipse au second.' 9 

However beautiful and noble the words Morality and Virtue may sound, 
the universal distinct recognition of them as the useful is the only thing 
that will be truly salutary and beneficial to human society. He who 



446 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

clearly sees that the sinner is like the savage who hews down the whole 
tree in order to come at the fruit, often sour, or tasteless, or unwhole- 
some; while the virtuous man is like the prudent gardener who, waiting 
their maturity, gathers all the sweet produce, with the joyful conscious- 
ness that he has destroyed no future crop; — this man's virtue will pro- 
bably stand on the most secure basis. The more enlightened men in ge- 
neral are, as to what is good or profitable for them, the better and more 
humane will their manners and conduct towards each other become. 
Action and reaction will then proceed in a beneficent circle; — enlighten- 
ed individuals will establish better forms of government and better insti- 
tutions, and these again will increase the intelligence of all who live un- 
der them. If matters once reached such a point, that a truly rational and 
elevating system of education freed us from the chimeras of dark times, 
dismissed all constraint on religious opinions among other obsolete ab- 
surdities, while it clearly demonstrated the inward and outward neces- 
sity of Love and Virtue to the happy existence of human society; while 
by the establishment of wise, firm, and consistent laws and political insti- 
tutions, sprung from the conviction of this necessity, it imposed sufficient 
restraint to ensure the permanent adherence to these by the salutary 
habits produced, — Paradise would exist on earth. 

Mere penal laws, whether for here or hereafter, without this profound 
conviction, — all worldly policy, in the sense of clever, adroit knaves,— 
all prophets, all superhuman extra-revelations, heaven, hell, and priests, — 
will never bring us to this:* indeed, so long as all these hang on the 
spokes, the wheel of improvement will revolve but slowly and painfully. 
For this reason, so many strive with all their might against such a result; 
nay, even Protestants protest backwards, and many desire to establish a 
new continental embargo to shut out foreign light. 

' Au reste,' one cannot take it amiss of any man ' qu'il preche pour sa 
paroisse.' To require from an English archbishop with 50,000/. a year 
that he should be an enlightened man, is as preposterous as to expect from 
the Shah of Persia that he should transform himself into a constitutional 
monarch of his own free will. There are few men who would voluntarily 
refuse a rich and splendid sinecure, where nothing is required of them 
but to fling a little dust in the people's eyes, or to be a despot ruling mil- 
lions with his nod. It is the business of human society, if possible, to put 
things upon such a footing that none of us, be our good-will for it ever so 
great, can either get such a sinecure or become such a despot. 

When I was a child, it often happened to me that I could get no rest 
for thinking of the fate of Hannibal, or that I was in despair at the battle 
of Pultawa; — now I am grieving over Columbus. We are greatly indebt- 
ed to the distinguished American, Washington Irving, for this history. 
It is a beautiful tribute to the great navigator, brought from the land 
which he gave to the civilized world, and which appears destined to be 
the last station traversed by the cycle of human perfectibility. 

What a man was this sublime endurer! Too great for his age: for forty 
years he was deemed by it but a madman; during the rest of his life he 
was the victim of its hatred and jealousy, under which he sank at length 
in want and misery. But such is the world: and it would be enough to 

* It is perhaps hardly worth remarking 1 , that at the time in which eternal hell-fire 
was the most ^sincerely and generally believed in, morality was at the very lowest 
ebb, and the number of great crimes a thousandfold what it now is. — Editoii. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 447 

make us mad, did we fix our "minds upon particulars, and did not reflec- 
tion soon teach us that for wise Nature the individual is nothing, the spe- 
cies every thing. We live for and through mankind, and every thing finds 
its compensation in the great whole. This reflection suffices to tranquil- 
lize any reasonable man; for every seed springs up, — if not exactly for 
the hand that sowed it, yet be it evil or good, not one is lost to the human 
race. 

What has often and bitterly vexed me, is to hear people lament the 
wretchedness of this life, and call the world a vale of sorrows. This is 
not only the most crying ingratitude (humanly speaking,) but the true 
sin against the Holy Ghost. Is not enjoyment and well-being manifestly 
throughout the world the positive natural state of animated beings? Is 
not suffering, evil, organic imperfection or distortion, the negative shadow 
in this general brightness? Is not creation a continual festival to the 
healthy eye, — the contemplation of which, and of its splendour and beauty, 
fills the heart with adoration and delight? And were it only the daily 
sight of the enkindling sun and the glittering stars, the green of the trees 
and the gay and delicate beauty of flowers, the joyous song of birds, and 
the luxuriant abundance and rich animal enjoyment of all living things,— 
it would give us good cause to rejoice in life. But how much still more 
wondrous wealth is unfolded in the treasures of our own minds! what 
mines are laid open by love, art, science, the observation and the history 
of our own race, and, in the deepest deep of our souls, the pious reveren- 
tial sentiment of God and his universal work! Truly we were less un- 
grateful were we less happy; and but too often we stand in need of suf- 
fering to make us conscious of this. A cheerful grateful disposition is a 
sort of sixth sense, by which we perceive and recognise happiness. He 
who is fully persuaded of its existence may, like other unthinking chil- 
dren, break out into occasional complaints, but will sooner return to rea- 
son; for the deep and intense feeling of the happiness of living, lies like 
a rose-coloured ground in his inmost heart, and shines softly through the 
darkest figures which fate can draw upon it. 

Paradoxes of my friend B H Yes, certainly the spirit rules 

in us and we in it; and is eternal, and the same which rules through all 
worlds; but that which we call our human soul, we frame to ourselves 
here. The apparent double being in us,: — of which one part follows the 
impulses of sense, while the other reflects upon the nature and move- 
ments of its companion, and restrains it, — naturally arises from the (so 
to say) double nature and destiny of man, who is framed to live as an 
individual, and also as an integral part of society. The gift of speech 
was a necessary condition of this latter form of existence, which without 
it could never have arisen. A solitary man is, and must remain, nothing 
better than an extremely intelligent brute; he has no more a soul than 
any other such: — the experiment may be repeated any day. But as soon 
as the man begins to live with other men, as soon as the interchange of 
observations is rendered possible to him by speech, he begins to perceive 
that the individual must submit to what is for the good of the whole — of 
the society, that is, to which he belongs; that he must make some sacri- 
fices to its maintenance: this is the first rise of the moral principle, the 
essence of the soul. The feeling of his own weakness and uncertainty 
next gives birth to religion; the feeling of need of others like himself, to 
love. Selfishness and humanity now enter upon that continual antagonism 
which is called, I know not why, the inexplicable riddle of life; though 



44S LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

with my view of the matter, nothing appears to me more natural and 
consequential. The real problem for mankind is, merely to establish the 
proper balance between these two poles. The more perfectly this is at- 
tained, tiie better and the happier is thenceforward the condition of the 
man, the family, the state. Either extreme is pernicious. The indivi- 
dual who tries to benefit himself alone, must succumb at length to the 
power of the many. The romantic enthusiast who starves himself to feed 
others, will be called by men, (who are ready enough to admire any 
sacrifice made to them, though they often laugh at it too,) magnanimous, 
or foolish, according to their peculiar fancy: but such conduct can never 
be general, and can never become a norma or pattern for imitation — in 
other words, a duty. Martyrs who give themselves to the flames in 
honour of the sacred number three, or let the nails grow through the 
back of the hands to the glory of Brama, belong to this same class, though 
to the lowest step of it; and receive, according to the prevalent notions 
of their age, the appellation of saint or madman, but are at all events 
mere exceptions, (Abnormit'dten. ) Not that I mean to deny that a 
rational abnegation and sacrifice of oneself for the good of others is noble 
and beautiful: by no means. It is unquestionably a beautiful, that is, a 
beneficent example of the victory of the social over the selfish principle, 
which forms a refreshing contrast to the far too numerous instances of 
those whose views never extend beyond themselves, and who end in be- 
coming the pitiless remorseless criminals against whom society is com- 
pelled to declare everlasting war. But since we are bound to ourselves 
more nearly than to society, by that law of self-preservation which is 
necessary to our existence, egotists are more common than philanthro- 
pists, vicious men than virtuous. The former are the truly rude and 
ignorant, the latter the civilized and instructed. (An ' avviso' by the 
by to all governments who wish to rule in the dark.) But as even the 
most civilized have a substratum of rudeness, just as the most highly 
polished marble when broken exhibits the rough grain beneath, philan- 
thropy herself cannot deny that she is the offspring of self-interest, — that 
she is indeed only self-interest diffused over the whole of mankind. 

Where this feeling, therefore, displays itself in a very grand and 
energetic manner, though it be for the sole advantage of the individual, 
the possessors of it, such as are commonly called great men and heroes, 
compel the admiration even of those who disapprove their course of 
action. Nay, experience teaches us, that men who, with consummate 
indifference to the good of others, have heaped innumerable sufferings on 
their fellow men, if they have at the same time manifested a gigantic and 
over-mastering power, and been favoured by fortune, have invariably 
been the objects of the high admiration even of those who suffered under 
them. This shows what I said before, that necessity and fear are the 
germs of human society, and continue to be the mightiest levers under 
all circumstances; and that power, (or strength,) is always the object of 
the greatest reverence and admiration. Alexander and Caesar cut a 
greater figure in history than Horatius Codes and Regulus, (admitting 
the latter not to be fabulous personages.) Disinterestedness, friendship, 
philanthropy, generosity, are flowers of rarer growth; they generally un- 
fold themselves at a later season, and with a more delicate fragrance. 
To the philosophic mind the highest power manifests itself in perfect good- 
ness: and devoted ness to others in the end becomes the highest enjoy- 
ment to the individual himself. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 449 

Another, and, as it seems to me, a striking; proof lliat what we call 
Morality is entirely the growth of social life, is, that, as it appears to me, 
we recognise no such principle in our conduct towards other beings. If 
it were in our power, we should willingly enough pluck a star from hea- 
ven and analyse it for the benefit of our science; nor, if we had an angel 
in our power, should we be very scrupulous in our treatment of him, 
were we certain we had nothing to fear from him. That our treatment 
of the lower animals, and in too many cases of the negroes, is utterly and 
purely selfish, and that we must have reached a high point of civilization 
before even we cease to torment them or to let them suffer uselessly and 
wantonly, is but too obvious a fact. Nay more,* men, even among each 
other, throw off the positive moral principle, as soon as a power which 
they recognise as competent partially dissolves the obligations of society. 
As soon as war is declared, the most virtuous soldier kills his fellow man 
' ex officio,' though perhaps he be but the compulsory servant of a despot 
whom in his heart he regards as the scum of the earth: or the Pope, in 
the name of the religion of love, absolves men from every sentiment of 
truth, rectitude or humanity; and immediately the pious burn, torture, 
kill, lie, ' con amore,' and die satisfied and blessed, in fulfilment of 
their duty, and to the glory of God! 

The lower animals, which are destined to live for themselves alone, 
know no virtue, and have, therefore, no soul, as it is truly said. Yet in 
the domestic animals, notwithstanding the low order of their reasoning 
faculty, — from education and from the sort of social intercourse in which 
they live with man, we may perceive very obvious traces of morality, and 
the gradual creation of a perception of right and wrong. We see that they 
are capable of disinterested love; capable even of great self-sacrifice 
without the motive of fear: — in short, they enter upon the same path as 
men, their souls begin to germinate and expand; and had animals 
the faculty of speech, it is possible they would advance to a level with 
ourselves. 

Our best and most useful study would be, to endeavour to see what we 
are, and wherefore we are so, without vain hypotheses or tedious discus- 
sions: — this is the only road to a permanent spread of clear and enlight- 
ened ideas, and consequently to true happiness. It may be questioned 
whether German philosophy has not chosen too poetical a path; whether 
it do not rather resemble a rocket, which soars into the heavens in a thou- 
sand sparkles and tries to assimilate itself to the stars, but soon vanishes 
into nothing, — than a fire which gives out beneficent light and heat. How 
many eccentric systems of this kind, from Kant to Hegel, have glittered 
their moment, and then either rapidly expired, or lived on, divided into 
obscure and unprofitable fragments! 

It is very problematical whether society have reaped so much practical 
advantage from them as from the now so little valued French philoso- 
phers, who stuck to what was near at hand; and in the first place so ef- 
fectually divided the main nerve of the boa of priestly superstition with 
their sharp operating-knives, that it has never since been able to do more 
than feebly drag itself about. The philosopher ought surely to embrace 
actual life in his speculations, (the greatest of all sages was not less prac- 
tical, than comprehensively intelligent;) and men who instruct mankind 
in this manner stand higher in the history of its benefactors than the most 
astonishing of the firework-makers above mentioned. 

The true and only object of philosophy is unquestionably the investi- 

57 



450 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

gation of truth: — of such truth, be it observed, as can be investigated, for 
such alone can give any results. To inquire into the incomprehensible 
is to thrash straw. The most direct way to the attainment of discovera- 
ble truth is in my opinion now, as in the days of Aristotle, only that of 
experiment. At a later stage of science we may venture to say with jus- 
tice, because the law is so, experience must confirm my conclusions; but 
this law could only have been discovered by means of prior experiment. 
Lalande might very fairly maintain that such and such stars must 
stand in such and such relations, although the most accurate observa- 
tion seemed to prove the contrary, because he already knew the unal- 
terable rule; but without Newton's falling apple, &c, — without the pre- 
vious and long-continued observations of individual phenomena, and the 
truths thence elicited, — the secrets of the heavens were still a book with 
seven seals. 

But if philosophy would seek out truth, she ought above all to seek it 
in relation to the human species. Histories of mankind, in the widest 
sense, and whatever can be deduced from them for the behoof of the pre- 
sent and the future, must ever be her chief object. By following this di- 
rection, we may gradually succeed in arriving, from the knowledge of 
what has been and is, at the knowledge of causes; i. e. why things are so, 
and not otherwise: and then again, going back from fact to fact, may ap- 
proach to fundamental laws, and thus find out a norma or rule for the fu- 
ture. Although the first causes of all existence should forever remain 
undiscoverable by us, it were sufficient, could we clearly and distinctly 
ascertain what were the original powers of our being, what they have be- 
come, and what direction we ought to endeavour to give to their further 
growth. Here the reflection will forcibly present itself, that a further 
progression and improvement are only possible in the element of freedom, 
and with an unrestrained interchange of ideas. The most noble and im- 
portant invention by or for mankind, was therefore indisputably that of 
printing. Happily, it was born quick and active, for the human intellect 
was at its birth sufficiently matured to employ this mighty engine for the 
furtherance of the greatest ends. This invention alone has since render- 
ed it possible to call into life that gigantic power, which nothing will long 
be able to withstand — public opinion. By this I do not mean the cla- 
mours of the mob, but the judgment of the best and wisest, which, since 
they have found an organ, have penetrated to all, and in the end must 
effect the destruction of those mere clamours. 

Without printing, there would have been no Luther; — and until that 
epoch, had Christianity really been able to make its way? At the time of 
the thirty years' war, at the time of the English Queen Mary, at the time 
of the Inquisition, ' horribile dictu!' had Christianity rendered men more 
merciful, more moral, more benign? I see little evidence of it. Free- 
dom of the press was the great step which at once brought us infi- 
nitely nearer to the grand end — the universal diffusion of intelligence; 
and has given such an impulse to human affairs, that we now learn and 
accomplish more in ten years than our ancestors did in a hundred. The 
mass of information and intelligence thus accumulated, is what we must 
look to for the amelioration of the condition of mankind. In every age 
there have been illustrious men, — men, perhaps, whom no succeeding age 
will surpass or equal: but they stood alone; and although their effect on 
the world was not utterly lost, they could generally diffuse but a partial 
and momentary light, which the lapse of time dimmed or quite obscured. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 451 

Let us take as an instance Christ, who, as Gibbon has shown, appeared 
under peculiarly favourable circumstances. How many men have called, 
and do call, themselves after his name; and how many are true Chris- 
tians? He, the most liberal, the most tolerant, the most sincere and be- 
nign of men, has served for nearly two thousand years as a shield to des- 
potism, persecution, and falsehood, and lent his exalted and sacred name 
to a new form of heathenism. 

It is therefore, I repeat, only the mass of knowledge, the intelligence 
which has pervaded a ivhole nation, which can form the basis of perma- 
nent, solid and rational institutions, through which society and indivi- 
duals may be made better and happier. Towards this the world now 
tends. Politics, in the highest signification of the word, is the religion 
of the present time. For that, all the enthusiasm of mankind is awaken- 
ed; and should crusades now be undertaken, that alone would be the ob- 
ject. The notion of representative chambers has now-a-days a more elec- 
tric effect than that of a ruling church; and even the fame of the warrior 
begins to grow pale, by the side of that enlightened statesman and citizen. 
"Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good!" 
But now 'treve de bavardage.' In the mountains I should not have 
bored you with so much of it; but within the dingy walls of a city I feel 
as Faust did-within those of his study. But a little breeze has sprung up. 
To-morrow a fresher gale will swell my sails. Wherever I am, — in pri- 
son, or under the blue sky, — I am, and shall ever be, 

Your true, heartily devoted, L . 

P. S. This is my last letter from Dublin. I have had my carriage pack- 
ed and sent to S ; dismissed my Englishmen, and shall travel under 

the 'non de guerre' you know of, — which is now become 'romantic,' by 
Bath and Paris with one honest Irish servant. I shall neither hurry, nor 
stay longer than necessary. The most difficult business — taking leave of 
friends — is done, and nothing now detains me. 



LETTER XLIV. 

Holyhead, December 15th, 1828. 
Dear and faithful Friend, 

You have often called me child-like, and no praise is more grateful to 
me. Yes, Heaven be praised, dear Julia! children we shall both remain, 
so long as we live, though a hundred wrinkles sat upon our brows. But 
children are fond of play, are rather 'inconsequent,' and are ever on the 
watch for pleasure: ' C'est la l'essentiel.' Thus then you must judge of 
me, and never expect much more from me. Do not therefore reproach 
me with wandering about without an object. Good Heaven ! has not 
Parry, with his object, been obliged to sail three times to the north pole, 
and at last return without attaining it? Has not Napoleon for twenty years 
heaped victory on victory to pine away at last on St. Helena, because he 
had attained his object too early and too well? And what is generally the 
object of men? Not one of them can give an exact and definite account of 
it. The ostensible aim is always merely a part of the whole, often only the 
means to an end; and even the real and ulterior end frequently changes 
its form and its motives as these change their aspect. Thus it was with 



452 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

me. People have also collateral objects, which often seem the principal 
ones, because they do better to announce. Thus again it was with me. 
' Au bout du compte' I am satisfied, — and what can one have more? 

Neptune must have a peculiar affection for me, for whenever he gets 
me in his power he keeps me as long as he can. The wind was directly 
contrary, and blew with great violence. On the sea and on high moun- 
tains the lucky principle in me becomes extremely feeble. I scarcely ever 
had a favourable wind at sea; nor a clear sky, when I had climbed thou- 
sands of feet nearer to it. 

Yesterday evening at eleven o'clock I quitted Dublin in a post-chaise 
in a beautiful clear moonlight night. The air was mild and balmy as in 
summer. I recapitulated the last two years, and called up all their events 
in review before me. The result did not displease me. I have erred here 
and there, but I find my mind on the whole become firmer and clearer. 
In detail I have also gained and learned some things. I have not impair- 
ed my physical machine: and lastly, I have imprinted many an agreeable 
picture in the volume of my memory. I feel my good spirits and my en- 
joyment of life ten times stronger than they were in the morbid state of 
mind in which I quitted you; and as this is of more value than all exter- 
nal things, after giving myself patient audience, I looked forward into 
the unknown future with cheerfulness, and relished the present with de- 
light. The present consisted in the furious driving of the half-drunk 
postilions: we went along a lofty embankment, or causeway, close to the 
sea, in the pale moonlight, ' hop, hop, hop, clahin im saasenden Gallop,' 
till we reached a very handsome inn at Howth, where I slept. A magni- 
ficent Newfoundland dog of enormous size gave me his company at tea, 
and again in the morning at breakfast. Perfectly white with a black face, 
the colossal creature looked like a polar bear, who in a fit of absence had 
put on the head of one of his black relatives. I wanted to buy him, but 
the host would not part with him on any terms. 

In the night I had a strange dream: — I found myself entangled in po- 
litical affairs, in consequence of which my person was watched and my 
life threatened. My first escape from death was at a great hunting party, 
in which four or five disguised huntsmen fell upon me in the thickest 
part of the wood, and fired upon me, but did not hit me. The next thing 
was an attempt to poison me: and I had already swallowed a green pow- 
der, which had been given to me as medicine, when the Duke of Wel- 
lington came in, and said to me very coolly, " It's nothing; I have just 
taken the same, here is the antidote." After taking this, the usual ope- 
ration of an antidote followed. (Probably this was from anticipation of 
my voyage.) In a short time I was better than before. — I set out, and 
was soon near the end of my journey, when I was attacked by robbers, 
who pulled me out of my carriage, and dragged me through brambles and 
ruins to a very high narrow wall, along the top of which we hastily step- 
ped, while it seemed to totter under our feet. We walked on and on, 
and it seemed to have no end; and besides the fear, I was tormented by 
gnawing hunger, from which the robbers suffered equally. At last they 
called out to me that I must find them something to eat, or they would 
kill me. Just then I thought I heard a soft voice whisper "Show them 
that door." I looked up, and saw a high building like an abbey, over- 
grown with ivy and overshadowed by black pines, without door or win- 
dow, except a ' porte cochere' of bronze, shut, and of colossal height. 
With sudden determination I exclaimed, "Fools! why do you ask food 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 453 

of me, when the great storehouse is before you?" " Where?" growled the 
captain. " Open that gate," replied I. As soon as the band perceived it, 
all rushed upon it, the captain foremost; — but before they could touch it, 
the huge gates slowly and silently unclosed themselves. A strange sight 
presented itself. We looked into a vast hall which appeared to us of end- 
less length; the roof overarched our heads at a giddy height; all around 
was magnificently adorned with gold, and with beautiful bas-reliefs and 
pictures, which seemed to have life and motion. On either side against 
the wall was ranged an interminable row of grim-looking wooden figures, 
with faces rudely painted, clad in gold and steel, with drawn sword and 
lance, and mounted upon stuffed horses. In the middle the vista was 
closed by a gigantic black steed, bearing a rider thrice as big and as ter- 
rible as the rest. He was cased from top to toe in black iron. As if in- 
spired, I cried out, " Ha, Rudiger! is it thou! venerable ancestor, save 
me!" The words echoed like a loud thunder-clap in a hundred peals 
along the vaulted roof; and we thought we saw the wooden figures and 
their stuffed horses roll their eyes horribly. We all shuddered; — when 
suddenly the gigantic knight flourished aloft his terrible battle-sword like 
a lightning-flash, and in an instant his steed with fearful bounds and cur- 
vetings was close upon us; when a clock struck with awful sound, and 
the giant stood again a motionless statue before us. Overpowered by terror, 
we all took to flight as quickly as our legs would carry us. To my shame 
I must confess I did not remain behind. I had reached an old wall, but 
fear turned my feet to lead. I now perceived a side door, and was going 
to attempt to get through it, when a frightful voice yelled in my ear 
"Half past seven." I was ready to sink on the earth from terror,— a 
strong hand grasped me,— I opened my eyes bewildered, and my Irish 
servant stood before me — to announce to me that if I did not get up im- 
mediately, the steam-packet would infallibly sail without me. — You see, 
dear Julia, as soon as I set out on my travels, adventures await me, 
though but in my sleep. I found the people occupied in getting on board 
a handsome carriage, stuffed with I think even more comforts and super- 
fluities than I take with me when I travel in this manner. The valet 
and servants were busy, alert, and respectful; while a young man of 
about twenty, with light hair carefully curled, and very elegantly dress- 
ed in deep mourning, sauntered up and down the deck with all the indo- 
lence of an English 'man of fashion,' taking not the smallest notice of 
his property or what his people were doing. As I afterwards learned, he 
had just succeeded to an estate of 20,000/. a year in Ireland, and was 
now going abroad to spend it. He was hastening to Naples; and appear- 
ed such a good-natured young fellow that even sea-sickness did not put 
him out of humour. While talking with him, I thought — reflecting upon 
the difference between us, ' Voila le commencement et la fin!' One whom 
the world sends forth, and says ' Partake of me;' and the other whom 
she calls home, and says ' Digest me.' May Heaven only preserve my 
stomach in good order for the operation ! But these melancholy thoughts 
arose only from the ' qualms' of the steam-boiler and the sea; and after a 
little reflection I rejoiced in the sight of this young creature, so rich in 
hopes, as much as if the illusions had been my own. 

This evening I intend to proceed with the mail, and hope that a good 
dinner will put an end to the nausea left by the long transit. 



454 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Shrewsbury, Dec. 16th: Evening. 

Things did not turn out so well as I expected: the dinner was by no 
means good, but on the contrary, vile; and the voyage left me a * migraine,' 
with which I was obliged to set out at midnight. Fortunately we were 
but two in the comfortable four-seated coach, so that each had a whole 
side to himself. I slept tolerably; and the air and gentle motion had so 
beneficial an effect, that at seven, when I waked, my head-ache was 
nearly gone. The Holyhead mail is bound to go two German miles in an 
hour, all stoppages included.* We arrived here to breakfast, and I staid 
to see the city. I visited first the castle, the greater part of which is of 
extreme antiquity: it is built of red stone: the inside is somewhat mo- 
dernized. The view from the old ' keep,' on which there is now a sum- 
mer-house, over the river Severn and a rich and fertile valley, is very 
beautiful and cheerful. Close by is the prison, in which I saw the poor 
devils at work in fhe treadmill. They were all dressed in yellow cloth, 
like so many Saxon postilions, to whose phlegm this exercise would often 
be advantageous. From this new-fashioned establishment for education 
I wandered, (travelling back eight hundred years in a minute,) to the re- 
mains of an old abbey, of which only the church is in good preservation 
and in use. The painted windows in this, as in almost all the churches 
in England, were destroyed by Cromwell's fanatics, but are here remark- 
ably well restored with newly-painted glass. The founder of the abbey, 
Roger Montgomery, (first Earl of Shrewsbury and one of William the 
Conqueror's followers,) lies buried in the church under a fine monument. 
Near him lies a Templar, exactly like the one at Worcester, except in 
the colouring. He lies with his legs crossed in the manner which distin- 
guishes the tombs of his order. The Earl of Shrewsbury not only built 
and endowed the abbey, but died within its walls as a monk, in expiation 
of his sins. Thus did the elasticity of the human mind soon find means 
to lay spiritual curb and bridle on the rough power of the knights. 

The city is very remarkable, from its numerous ancient houses of the 
most extraordinary form and architecture. I frequently stood still in the 
streets to sketch one in my pocket-book: this always collected a crowd 
about me, who stared at me astonished, and not unfrequently disturbed 
me. The English ought not to wonder, therefore, if the same thing hap- 
pens to them in Turkey and Egypt. 

Hereford, Dec. 17th. 
It cannot be denied that after being deprived of it for some time, one 
returns to 'English comfort' with increased relish. Change, however, is 
the soul of life, and gives to every thing in its turn a fresh value. The 
good inns, the neatly served 'breakfasts and dinners,' the spacious, care- 
fully warmed beds, the civil and adroit waiters, struck me, after Irish 
deficiencies, very agreeably, and soon reconciled me to the higher prices. 
At ten in the morning I left Shrewsbury again in the mail, and reached 
Hereford at eight in the evening. As it was not cold I got outside, and 
gave my place within to my servant. Two or three ordinary sort of men, 
and a pretty animated boy of eleven, were my companions. The conver- 
sation was furiously political. The boy was the son of a man of consider- 

* Our Eilkutschen will never approach the English stage-coaches till the post is 
entirely free, and till there is an equal competition of travellers: neither is to be ex- 
pected. — Editor. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 455 

able landed property, and was travelling home from school, a hundred 
miles off, to spend his Christmas holidays. This custom of throwing chil- 
dren so early on their own resources, unquestionably gives them through 
life that feeling of independence and self-reliance which the English pos- 
sess above all other nations, and especially above the Germans. The joy 
and vivacious restlessness of the child as he approached his home, both 
touched and delighted me. There was something so natural and so in- 
tense in it, that I involuntarily thought of my own childhood,— of that 
invaluable, and at the time unvalued, happiness which we know only in 
retrospect. 

Monmouth, Dec. 18th. 

To-day, dear Julia, I have once more had one of those romantic days 
which I have long been deprived of; one of those days whose varied pic- 
tures delight one like fairy tales in childhood. I am indebted for it to the 
celebrated scenery of the river Wye, which even in winter asserted its 
claim to be considered one of the most beautiful parts of England. 

Before I quitted Hereford I paid a very early visit to the cathedral, in 
which I found nothing remarkable except a handsome porch. I was near 
being too late for the mail, which in England waits for nobody. I literally 
caught it flying, but used it only for the thirteen miles from Hereford to 
Ross, which we traversed in an extremely short time, though with four 
blind horses. At Ross I hired a boat, sent it forwards five miles to Gode- 
rich Castle, and took my way thither on foot. My road lay first through 
a churchyard, on an eminence commanding a beautiful view; then through 
a rich luxuriant country like that on Lake Lugano, to the ruin, where I 
found the little boat with two rowers and my Irishman already waiting. 
I had to cross the river, which is here rather impetuous, in order to reach 
the hill crowned with the old castle. — The ascent on the slippery turf was 
arduous enough. As I entered the lofty archway, a blast of wind took my 
cap off my head, as if the spirit of the place would teach me respect to 
the shade of its knightly possessor. The awe and admiration could not 
be enhanced, however, with which I wandered through the dark passages 
and the spacious courts, and climbed the crumbling staircase. In summer 
and autumn the Wye is never free from visitors; but as it probably never 
entered the head of a methodical Englishman to make a tour in winter, 
the people are not at all prepared for it, and during the whole day I found 
neither guide nor any sort of help for travellers. The ladder, without 
which it is impossible to reach the top of the highest tower, was not forth- 
coming; it had been removed to winter quarters. With the help of the 
boatmen and my servant I constructed a Jacob's-ladder, by means of 
which I scrambled up. From the battlements you overlook a boundless 
stretch of country: — the robber knights who inhabited this fortress had 
the advantage of seeing travellers on the road at many miles distance. 
After I had duly grubbed into every hole and corner, and descended the 
hill on the other side, I breakfasted with great enjoyment in the boat, 
while it was rapidly borne along on the swift current. The weather was 
beautiful, the sun shone bright, — a very rare occurrence at this season, — 
and the air was as warm as in a pleasant April day with us. The trees 
had indeed no leaves; but as their branches were extremely thick, and 
they were intermixed with many evergreens, and the grass was even 
greener and brighter than in summer, the landscape lost much less in 
beauty than might have been imagined. The soil is uncommonly fruitful; 



456 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the gentle hills are clothed from top to bottom with wood arid copse; few 
ploughed fields, chiefly meadows interspersed with trees, while every 
bend of the winding stream presents a church, a village, or a country 
house, in a succession of the most varied pictures. For some time we 
hovered on the boundaries of three counties, — Monmouth on the right, 
Hereford on the left, and Gloucester before us. In a picturesque spot, 
opposite to iron- works whose flames are visible even by day, stands a 
house, one-half of which bears the stamp of modern times, the other half 
that of gray antiquity. This is the place in which, Henry the Fifth passed 
his childhood, under the care of the Countess of Salisbury. Lower down 
in the valley stands the little humble church in which he was christened 
and she was buried. Agincourt and FalstafF, knightly times, and the 
creations of Shakspeare, occupied my fancy, till Nature, older and greater 
than all, soon made me forget them: for now our little bark glided into 
the rocky region, where the foaming stream and its shores assume the 
grandest character. These are craggy and weather-beaten walls of sand- 
stone, of gigantic dimension, perpendicular or overhanging, projecting 
abrubtly from amid oaks, and hung with rich festoons of ivy. The rains 
and storms of ages have beaten and washed them into such fantastic forms, 
that they appear like some caprice of human art. Castles and towers, 
amphitheatres and fortifications, battlements and obelisks, mock the wan- 
derer, who fancies himself transported into the ruins of a city of some ex- 
tinct race. Some of these picturesque masses are often loosened by the 
action of the weather, and fall thundering from rock to rock with a terrific 
plunge into the river, which is here extremely deep. The boatmen showed 
me the remains of one of these blocks, and the monument of an unfortu- 
nate Portuguese whom it buried in its fall. This extraordinary formation 
reaches for nearly eight miles, to within about three of Monmouth, where 
it terminates in a solitary colossal rock called the Druid's Head. Seen 
from a certain point it exhibits a fine antique profile of an old man sunk 
in deep sleep. Just as we rowed by, the moon rose immediately above it, 
and gave it a most striking effect. 

A short time afterwards we passed through a narrow part of the stream 
between two shores wooded to their summits, till we came in sight of a 
large bare plateau of rock, called King Arthur's Plain; — the fabulous 
hero is said to have encamped here. In half an hour we reached' Mon- 
mouth, a small ancient town, in which Henry the Fifth was born. A 
lofty statue of him adorns the roof of the town-hall; but nothing remains 
of the castle in which he first saw the light, save an ornamented Gothic 
window, and a court in which turkeys, geese and ducks were fattened. 
This would have been more suitable to the birth-place of FalstafF. 

I went into a bookseller's shop to buy a ' Guide,' and unexpectedly 
made the acquaintance of a very amiable family. It consisted of the old 
bookseller, his wife, and. two pretty daughters, the most perfect speci- 
mens of innocent country girls I ever met with. I went in just as they 
were at tea; and the father, a very good-natured man, but unusually lo- 
quacious, for an Englishman, took me absolutely and formally prisoner, 
and began to ask me the strangest questions about the Continent and 
about politics. The daughters, who obviously pitied me — probably from 
experience — tried to restrain him; but I let him go on, and surrendered 
myself for half an hour 'de bonne grace,' by which I won the good-will 
of the whole family to such a degree,, that they all pressed me most 
warmly to stay some days in this beautiful country, and to take up my 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 457 

abode with them. When I rose at length to go, they positively refused 
to take any thing for the book, and 'bongre, malgre,' I was forced to 
keep it as a present. Such conquests please me, because their manifes- 
tation can come only from the heart. 

Chepstow, Dec. 19th. 

As I was dressed early, and after a rapid breakfast was going to set 
out, I discovered, not without a disagreeable surprise, that my purse and 
pocket-book were missing. I remembered perfectly that I laid them be- 
fore me in the coftee-room last night; that I was quite alone, and that I 
dined and wrote to you there; that I referred to the notes in my pocket- 
book for my letter, and used my purse to pay the boatmen. It was 
clear, therefore, that I must have left it there, and the waiter have taken 
possession of it. I rang for him, recapitulated the above facts, and 
asked, looking earnestly at him, if he had found nothing? The man 
looked pale and embarrassed, and stammered out that he had seen 
nothing but a. bit of paper with writing on it, which he believed was 
still lying under the table. I looked, and found it in the place he 
mentioned. All this appeared to me very suspicious. I made some 
representations to the host, a most disagreeable-looking fellow, which 
indeed contained some implied threats: but he answered shortly, 
That he knew his people; that a theft had not occurred in his house for 
thirty years, and that my behaviour was very offensive to him;— that if I 
pleased, he would immediately send to a magistrate, have all his servants 
sworn, and his house searched. But then, added he with a sneer, you 
must not forget that all your things, even to the smallest trifle, must be 
examined too; and if nothing is found on any of us, you must pay the 
costs and make me a compensation. 'Qu'allai-je faire dans cette galere?' 
thought I, and saw clearly that my best way was to put up with my loss — 
about ten pounds— and to depart. I therefore took some more bank- 
notes out of my travelling-bag, paid the reckoning, which was pretty 
moderate, and thought I distinctly recognised one of my own sovereigns 
in the change he gave me:— it had a little cut over George the Fourth's 
eye. Persuaded that host and waiter were partners in one concern, I 
shook off the dust of my feet, and stepped into the postchaise with the 
feelings of a man who has escaped from a den of thieves. 

To render a service to future travellers, I stopped the chaise, and went 
to inform my friend the bookseller of my mishap. The surprise and con- 
cern of all were equal. In a few minutes the daughters began to whisper 
to their mother, made signs to one another, then took their father on one 
side; and after a short deliberation, the youngest came up to me and asked 
me, blushing and embarrassed, " Whether this loss might not have caused 
me a ' temporary embarrassment,' and whether I would accept a loan of 
five pounds, which I could restore whenever I returned that way;" at the 
same time trying to push the note into my hand. Such genuine kindness 
touched me to the heart: it had something so affectionate and disinterest- 
ed, that the, greatest benefit conferred under other circumstances would 
perhaps have inspired me with less gratitude than this mark of unaffected 
good-will. You may imagine how cordially I thanked them. ' " Certain- 
ly," said I, " were I in the slightest difficulty, I should not be too proud 
to accept so kind an offer; but as this is not in the least degree the case, 
I shall lay claim to your generosity in another way, and beg permission 
to be allowed to carry back to the Continent a kiss from each of the fair 



458 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

girls of Monmouth." This was granted, amid much laughter and good- 
natured resignation. Thus freighted, I went back to my carriage. As 
I had gone yesterday by water, I took my way to-day along the bank of 
the river to Chepstow. The country retains the same character, — rich, 
deeply-wooded and verdant: but in this part it is enlivened by numerous 
iron-works, whose fires gleam in red, blue, and yellow flames, and blaze 
up through lofty chimneys, where they assume at times the form of huge 
glowing flowers, when the lire and smoke, pressed down by the weight of 
the atmosphere, are kept together in a compact motionless mass. I alight- 
ed to see one of these works. It was not moved, as most are, by a steam- 
engine, but by an immense water-wheel, which again set in motion two 
or three smaller. This wheel had the power of eighty horses; and the 
whirling rapidity of its revolutions, the frightful noise when it was first 
set going, the furnaces around vomiting fire, the red-hot iron, and the 
half-naked black figures brandishing hammers and other ponderous instru- 
ments, and throwing around the red hissing masses, formed an admirable 
representation of Vulcan's smithy. 

About midway in my journey the country changed, as it did yesterday, 
into a stern rocky region. In the centre of a deep basin, encompassed by 
mountains of various forms, we descried immediately above the silver 
stream the celebrated ruins of Tintern Abbey. It would be difficult to 
imagine a more favourable situation, or a more sublime ruin. The en- 
trance to it seems as if contrived by the hand of some skilful scene-painter 
to produce the most striking effect'. The church, which is large, is still 
almost perfect: the roof alone and a few of the pillars are wanting. The 
ruins have received just that 'degree of care which is consistent with the 
full preservation of their character; all unpicturesque rubbish which could 
obstruct the view is removed, without any attempt at repair or embellish- 
ment. A beautiful smooth turf covers the ground, and luxuriant creeping 
plants grow amid the stones. The fallen ornaments are laid in picturesque 
confusion, and a perfect avenue of thick ivy-stems climb up the pillars 
and form a roof over-head. The better to secure the ruin, a new gate of 
antique workmanship, with iron ornaments, is put up. When this is sud- 
denly opened, the effect is most striking and surprising. You suddenly 
look down the avenue of ivy-clad pillars, and see their grand perspective 
lines closed, at a distance of three hundred feet, by a magnificent-window 
eighty feet high and thirty broad: through its intricate and beautiful 
tracery you see a wooded mountain, from whose side project abrupt masses 
of rock. Overhead the wind plays in the garlands of ivy, and the clouds 
pass swiftly across the deep blue sky. When you reach the centre of the 
church, whence you look to the four extremities of its cross, you see the 
two transept windows nearly as large and as beautiful as the principal one: 
through each you command a picture perfectly different, but each in the 
wild and sublime style which harmonizes so perfectly with the building. 
Immediately around the ruin is a luxuriant orchard. In spring, how ex- 
quisite must be the effect of these gray venerable walls rising out of that 
sea of fragrance and beauty! A Vandal lord and lord lieutenant of the 
county conceived the pious design of restoring the church. Happily, 
Heaven took him to itself before he had time to execute it. 

From Tintern Abbey the road rises uninterruptedly to a considerable 
height above the river, which is never wholly out of sight. The country 
readies the highest degree of its beauty in three or four miles, at the Duke 
of Beaufort's villa called the Moss House. Here are delightful paths, 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 459 

vvhicli lead in endless windings through wild woods and evergreen thickets, 
sometimes on the edge of lofty walls of rock, sometimes through caves 
fashioned by the hand of Nature, or suddenly emerge on open plateaus to 
the highest point of this chain of hills, called the Wind-cliff, whence you 
enjoy one of the most extensive and noble views in England. 

At a depth of about eight hundred feet, the steep descent below you 
presents in some places single projecting rocks; in others, a green bushy 
precipice. In the valley, the eye follows for several miles the course of 
the Wye, which issues from a wooden glen on the left hand, curves round 
a green garden-like peninsula rising into a hill studded with beautiful 
clumps of trees, then forces its foaming way to the right, along a huge 
wall of rock nearly as high as the point where you stand, and at length, 
near Chepstow Castle, which looks like a ruined city, empties itself 
into the Bristol Channel, where ocean closes the dim and misty distance. 

On this side of the river, before you, the peaked tops of a long ridge of 
hills extend along nearly the whole district which your eyes commands. It 
is thickly clothed with wood, out of which a continuous wall of rock fes- 
tooned with ivy picturesquely rears its head. Over this ridge you again 
discern water, — the Severn, five miles broad, thronged with a hundred 
white sails, on either shore of which you see blue ridges of hills full of 
fertility and rich cultivation. 

The grouping of this landscape is perfect: I know of no picture more 
beautiful. Inexhaustible in details, of boundless extent, and yet marked 
by such grand and prominent features, that confusion and monotony, the 
usual defects of a very wide prospect, are completely avoided. Pierce- 
field Park, which includes the ridge of hills from Wind-cliff to Chepstow, 
is therefore without question the finest in England, at least for situation. 
It possesses all that Nature can bestow; lofty trees, magnificent rocks, 
the most fertile soil, a mild climate favourable to vegetation of every kind, 
a clear foaming stream, the vicinity of the sea, solitude, and, from the 
bosom of its own tranquil seclusion, a view into the rich country I have 
described, which receives a lofty interest from a ruin the most sublime 
that the imagination of the finest painter could conceive, — I mean Chep- 
stow Castle. It covers five acres of ground, and lies close to the park 
on the side next the town, though it does not belong to it. 

England is indebted to Cromwell for almost all her ruined castles, as 
she is to Henry the Eighth for her crumbling churches and religious 
houses. The former were destroyed with fire and sword; the latter only 
suppressed, and left to the corroding tooth of time, and the selfishness 
and wantonness of man. Both agents have been equally efficacious; and 
these two great men have produced an effect they did not contemplate, 
but which resembles that of their persons, — a picturesque one. I strolled 
through the park on foot, and let the carriage follow by the high road: I 
reached the ruin at the verge of twilight, which increased the awful gran- 
deur of its appearance. The castle contains several extensive courts, 
and a chapel; a part of it is in good preservation. Large nut and yew- 
trees, orchards and beautiful turf, adorn the interior; trailing plants of 
all kinds festoon the walls. In the least ruinous part of the castle lives 
a woman with her family, who pays the Duke of Beaufort, the possessor, 
a rent, for permission to show the ruins to strangers, of whom she con- 
sequently demands a shilling. You see that in England, ' on fait fleche 
de tout bois,' and that an English nobleman with an income of sixty 
thousand a year, neither disdains to take the widow's mite, nor to lay 



460 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

strangers under regular contribution. To be sure there are some little 
German sovereigns who unfortunately do much the same. 

Satisfied with the employment of my day, as well as tired with climb- 
ing, and soaked with rain which had fallen within the last hour, I hasten- 
ed to my inn, my dishabille, and my dinner, — I felt something unusual 
in the pocket of my dressing-gown. I pulled it out surprised; and with 
shame I saw — my purse and pocket-book. It but now occurred to me 
that I had slipped them into this unaccustomed place from the fear of 
leaving them on the table. 

This shall serve as a lesson to me for the future, never to draw any 
unfavourable conclusions merely from the embarrassment and confusion 
of an accused person. The bare thought that others could suspect them 
may produce the same symptoms in men of irritable nerves and a quick 
sense of honour, as the consciousness of guilt in others. You will trust to 
the heart you know so well, that I instantly despatched a letter to my 
friend the bookseller, exculpating the host and waiter, and enclosing two 
pounds as some compensation to the latter, which I begged him to deliver 
with my sincere apologies. — -I ate my dinner with more relish after I had 
atoned for my offence to the best of my power. 

Your faithful L . 



LETTER XLV. 

Bristol, December 20th, 1828. 
Dear Julia, 

I hope you follow me on the map, which will make my letters more 
intelligible to you, though you cannot enjoy with me the beautiful views, 
of which I shall bring you back faithful copies in the port-folio of my 
memory. 

I revisited the magnificent castle this morning. A blooming girl was 
my guide, and formed a graceful contrast to the blackened towers, the 
dreadful prison of the regicide Marten, and the dark dungeons, to which 
we descended by a long staircase. I next visited a church with a re- 
markably beautiful Saxon porch, and a highly ornamented font in the same 
style. Here the unfortunate Marten lies buried. He was one of Charles 
the First's judges, and was imprisoned in Chepstow Castle for forty 
years, without ever, as it is asserted, losing his spirits. After the first 
few years his confinement seems to have been less vigorous, and to 
have gone on gradually becoming less severe. At least the girl showed 
me three rooms, of which the lowest was a most horrible hole, — while 
she ciceronised in the following words: "Here Marten was put at first, 
while he was wicked; but when he became serious, he was moved a 
story higher; and at last, when he was religious, he had the room with 
the beautiful view." 

At two o'clock I set out for Bristol on a crowded stage-coach; not- 
withstanding the violent rain, I with difficulty obtained a place on the 
box. We crossed a handsome bridge, affording the best point of view of 
the castle, which stands on a perpendicular rock overhanging the Wye, 
a position which gives it its peculiarly picturesque character. '"^We kept 
Piercefield Park, and its wall of rocks on one side the river, long in 
view. I remarked to the proprietor of the stage, who drove, that the 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 461 

possessor of this beautiful estate must be a happy man. " By no means," 
replied he; "the poor devil is over head and ears in debt, has a nu- 
merous family, and wishes with all his heart to find a good purchaser 
for Piercefield. Three months ago every thing was settled with a rich 
Liverpool merchant, who was going to buy it for his youngest son; 
but before the bargain was completed, this son married an actress, the 
father disinherited him, and the thing went oft"." Here was matter for 
moralizing. 

Meantime the weather grew worse; and at length ended in a complete 
storm. We had it in our backs indeed, but the passage across the Chan- 
Del was extremely unpleasant: the four horses, all the luggage, and the 
passengers, were huddled ' pele mele' into a little boat, which was so 
crowded one could hardly move. The post next to the horses was really 
one of danger, for they sometimes shyed at the sails, especially when they 
were shifted. 

On one of these occasions a gentleman fell, together with the box on 
which he was sitting, directly under them. The good-natured animals, 
however, only trod on him a little, they did not attempt to kick him. The 
boat, driven violently by the wind, lay quite on her side; and the waves 
incassantly dashed over us, and wetted us from head to foot. When we 
reached the end of our voyage, the landing was equally wearisome and dirty; 
and I lost, to my great annoyance, a part of Lord Byron's works. I was 
told that accidents often happen at this ferry, from the frequent storms 
and the numerous rocks. 

About six months ago the boat went down with the mail, and several 
persons lost their lives. We could not reach the usual landing-place, 
where there is a house, and were obliged to disembark on the shore, 
whence we walked to the inn along a strand of red and white veined 
marble. Here we got into another stage, filled with twenty persons, and 
drove (but not so quickly as the mail,) to Bristol. ~I could see nothing 
of this admired city but the bright lamps and gay well-stored shops. 

Bath, December 2lst. Evening. 
When I question my memory what it is that makes the Wye so much 
more beautiful than most rivers, I find that it is the marked and bold 
character of its shores, which never fall away into tame monotonous lines, 
nor exhibit an unmeaning variety: that it is almost always skirted by 
wood, rocks, or meadows enlivened by houses; seldom by fields, or culti- 
vated land, which though useful are -rarely picturesque. Its numerous 
and bold windings cause an incessant change in the grouping of the shores, 
so that the same objects present themselves under a hundred different 
- and beautiful aspects. This, by the way, is doubtless the ground of the 
preference landscape gardeners have given to winding roads over straight, 
and not that imaginary line of beauty about which so much has been said. 
As the objects which present themselves along the Wye are almost al- 
ways few, and in large masses, they invariably form beautiful pictures, — 
for pictures require to be bounded or framed. Nature creates according 
to a standard which we cannot judge of in its total effect; the highest har- 
mony of which must therefore be lost to us: — Art strives to form a part 
of this into an ideal whole, which the eye and mind of man can take in. 
This is in my opinion the idea which lies at the bottom of landscape garden- 
ing. But Nature herself here and there furnishes a perfect pattern or 
model for such creations of art, — a landscape microcosm; and seldom can 



462 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

more such models be found within the same distance than in the course 
of this voyage, where every bend of the river presents a fresh feast of art, 
if I may so speak. 

Pope somewhere says, 

" Pleased Vaga .echoes through its winding bounds, 
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds." 

The German language with all its richness is somewhat awkward and 
intractable for translation, especially from the English, which from being 
made up of various languages, possesses a peculiar facility in rendering 
foreign thoughts.* To me these two lines appear almost untranslatable: 
as often as 1 have attempted it, the thought lost all its grace; — perhaps, 
however, the awkwardness was mine. 

It is no small advantage to the Wye, that two of the most beautiful 
ruins in the world lie on its banks; and never was I more convinced than 
here, that a prophet has no honour in his own country. How else would 
so many Englishmen travel thousands of miles to fall into ecstacies at 
beauties of a very inferior order to these ! I must ask one more question;— 
why ruins have so much stronger an effect on the mind than the highest 
perfect specimen of architectural beauty? It seems almost as if these 
works of man did not attain their full perfection till Nature had tempered 
and corrected them: — and yet it is well that man should again step in, 
just at that point where Nature begins to efface all traces of his hand. A 
vast and well-preserved ruin is the most beautiful of buildings. 

I have already mentioned that the environs of Bristol have a high and a 
deserved reputation. In luxuriance of vegetation and fertility they can be 
surpassed by none, — in picturesque effect by few; ' C'est comme la terre 
promise.' Whatever one beholds, and (as a gourmand I add) whatever 
one tastes, is in full perfection. 

Bristol, a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, lies in a deep valley: 
Clifton, which rises in terraces on the hills immediately above it, seems 
only a part of the same town: it is easy to conceive that extraordinary 
effects must result from such a situation. Three venerable Gothic churches 
rise out of the confused mass of houses in the valley. Like the proud re- 
mains of feudal and priestly dominion (for these, though hostile brothers, 
went hand in hand,) they appear to rear their gray heads with a feeling of 
their ancient greatness, in scorn of the mushroom growth of modern 
times. One of them especially, Radclifte Church, is a wonderful struc- 
ture; — unfortunately, the sandstone of which it is built has suffered so 
much from time, that its ornaments are nearly fretted away. I went in 
while the organ was playing; and although I entered in the most quiet 
and respectful manner, and placed myself in a corner whence I could 
catch a stolen glance at the interior, the illiberality of the English Church 
would not allow me this satisfaction, and the preacher sent an old wo- 
man to tell me that I must sit down. As it is not the custom in Catholic 
churches to interrupt the devotions of a congregation on such light grounds 

• Few persons will agree with this position of the Author. If it be true, how 
doubly discreditable to English translators is the comparison of their performances 
with such translations as Voss's Homer, Schleiermacher's Plato, SchlegePs Sh.ak- 
speare and Calderon, &c. For any approach to these wonderful transfusions, where 
are we to look? At the abortive attempts at presenting to England any idea of 
Gothe?-TaANs. s » 






IRELAND, AT*D FRANCE. 463 

even if strangers go in without any caution to view whatever is worth 
seeing in the church, I might justly wonder that English Protestant 
piety should have so little cpnfidence in its own strength, as to be thus 
blown about by the slightest breath. The riddle was explained to me 
afterwards: I should have had to pay for my seat, and the truly pious 
motive was the sixpence. However, I had had enough, and left their 
* mummery'* without, paving. 

As soon as I returned to the inn I ordered a post-chaise, seated myself 
on the driver's seat, — not like the Emperor of China, as the place of ho- 
nour, but as the place for seeing, — and began my excursions in the envi- 
rons. I first visited the warm baths. They are situated just at the be- 
ginning of a rocky valley, which has a great resemblance to the Planische 
Grund near Dresden, only that the rocks are higher and the expanse of 
water much finer. Just in this spot we met the mayor in his state equip- 
age, much more splendid than that of our kings on the continent. It form-, 
ed a curious contrast with the solitary rocky scenery. As he passed, the 
postilion pointed out to me a distant ruined tower called ' Cook's Folly,' 
the property of a former mayor, a merchant, who ruined himself in build- 
ing it, and now lives in a ruin. He could not complete the Gothic cas- 
tle which he began to build in a most beautiful situation; perhaps it is a 
greater ornament to the scene in its present state. 

Ascending from the rocky valley we reached an extensive- table-land, 
which serves as a race-course, and thence over rising ground to Lord de 
Clifford's park, the entrance to which is very beautiful. You drive for 
about a mile and a half on the side of a high hill, through a winding 
avenue of primeval oaks, planted far enough from each other to stretch 
out their giant arms on every side to their full extent before they 
touch. Beneath their branches you catch the finest views of the rich 
vale of Bristol. It is like a noble gallery of pictures; under every tree 
you find a different one. To the right, on the rising ground appears a 
dark belt of plantation edging the green turf. Laurel, arbutus, and other 
evergreens border the road, till at a sudden turn the house and flower- 
garden burst upon the eye in all their decorated beauty. At the end 
of this park lies a ridge of hills, along whose narrow crest you drive 
some miles, and arrive at a noble sea view. At our feet lay the Russian 
fleet at anchor. It is bound to the Mediterranean, and in the storm of 
last week narrowly escaped shipwreck on this coast: — the English declare 
this was entirely caused by the ignorance and mindfulness of the sai- 
lors. I afterwards made the acquaintance of the captain and five other 
officers. To my great surprise they spoke no foreign language, so that 
our conversation was limited to signs: in other respects they seemed a 
polite and civilized sort of people. 

Not far from this park is an interesting establishment called 'The Cot- 
tages.' The proprietor, Mr. Harford, has endeavoured to realize the 
'beau ideal' of a village. A beautiful green space in the midst of the 
wood is surrounded by a winding road; on it are built nine cottages, all 
of different forms and materials; — stone, brick, wood, &c, and roofed 
with thatch, tiles, and slate; each surrounded with different trees, and 
enwreathed with various sorts of clematis, rose, honeysuckle, and vine. 
The dwellings, which are perfectly detached though they form a whole, 

* 'Popish mummery' is the name given by English Protestants to the Catholic 
worship; — their own fully answers to the same description. — Editor. 



464 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

have separate gardens, and a common fountain, which stands in the centre 
of the green, overshadowed by old trees. The gardens, divided by neat 
hedges, form a pretty garland of flowers and herbs around the whole vil- 
lage. What crowns the whole is, that the inhabitants are all poor fami- 
lies, whom the generous proprietor allows to live in the houses rent free. 
No more delightful or well-chosen spot could be found as a refuge for 
misfortune: its perfect seclusion and snugness breathe only peace andfor- 
getfulness of the world. 

Immediately opposite to the wood, a modern Gothic castle rears its 
head at a distance, from amid ancient oaks. I wished to see it, as well as 
the park around it, but could not get permission. Whenever the high 
road lies through an English park, a part of the wall is replaced by a ha-ha, 
or a transparent iron fence, that the passer-by may throw a modest and 
curious glance into the forbidden paradise: but this effort exhausts the 
stock of liberality usually possessed by an English land-owner. As it was 
Sunday too, I gave up all hope of moving the churlish porter to make any 
exception in my favour: on his brow was clearly written the converse of 
Dante's infernal inscription, * Voi che venite — di entrare lasciate ogni 
speranza.' 

I returned by way of Clifton, from which Bristol appeared to lie under 
my feet. The scene was greatly enlivened by the multitude of gaily- 
dressed church-goers of both sexes, whom I met in every road and lane. 
In strong contrast with these cheerful groups, was a large house painted 
entirely black, with white windows, and looking like an enormous cata- 
falque. I was told it was the public hospital, and a gentleman offered to 
show it to me. The interior was much more attractive than the exterior: 
its fine spacious apartments, and the exquisite cleanliness which pervades 
every part, must render it a most comfortable abode for the sick and 
suffering. In no place did I perceive the slightest offensive smell, ex- 
cept in the apothecary's shop. The right wing of the building is ap- 
propriated to male, the left to female patients; in both, the lower story 
to medical, the upper to surgical cases. The operating room was re- 
markably elegant, furnished with several marble basins, into which water 
was turned by cocks, so that in any part of the room the blood could be 
instantly washed away. In the centre was a mahogany sort of couch with 
leather cushions for the patients. In short, there was everything that an 
ameteur could desire. But beneficent as is their art, surgeons are gene- 
rally rather unfeeling^the gentleman who accompanied me did not form 
an exception. In one of the apartments I observed a woman who had 
completely covered herself with the bed-clothes, and asked him in a low 
voice, what was her disease. " O," replied he quite aloud, ** that is an 
incurable case of aneurism; as soon as it bursts she must die." The 
shrinking motion and the low groan under the bed-clothes, showed me 
but too clearly what agony this intelligence caused, and made me deeply 
regret my inquiry. In one of the men's wards I saw a man lying in bed, 
white and motionless as marble; and as we were at a considerable dis- 
tance, I asked the nature of his disorder. " I. don't know myself," re- 
plied my companion, " but I'll soon ask him.". "For Heaven's sake 
don't" said I: but he was off in an instant, felt the man's hand as it lay 
motionless, and came back saying with a laugh, " He is cured, for he is 
dead." 

Towards evening I hired one of the little carriages that ply between 
Bath and Bristol, and drove to the former place. I was alone, and slept" 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 465 

all the way. On waking from my 'siesta,' I beheld in the moonlight an 
extensive illuminated palace on a bare height, and learned that this was 
the benevolent endowment of a mere private man, for fifty poor widows, 
who live here in comfort, indeed in luxury. Numerous other rows of 
lamps soon gleamed in the horizon, and in a few minutes we rolled over 
the pavement of Bath. 

Bath, Dec. 22d. 

Since the day on which I communicated to you the important intelli- 
gence that the sun had shone, I have not seen his beneficent face. But, 
in spite of fog and rain, I have wandered about the whole dav long in 
this wonderful city, which, originally built in the bottom of a deep and 
narrow hollow, has gradually crept up the sides of all the surrounding 
hills. The magnificence of the houses, gardens, streets, terraces, and 
semicircular rows of houses called ' crescents,' which adorn every hill, is 
imposing and worthy of English opulence. Notwithstanding this, and the 
beauty of the surrounding country, fashion has deserted Bath, and fled 
with a sort of feverish rage to the unmeaning, treeless and detestably 
prosaic Brighton. Bath is still much resorted to by invalids, and even the 
forty thousand opulent inhabitants suffice to enliven it; but the fashion- 
able world is no longer to be seen here. The once celebrated king of 
Bath, the formerly ' far-famed Nash,' has lost more of his ' nimbus' than 
any of his colleagues. He who now fills the office, instead of driving 
through the streets with six horses and a retinue of servants, (the con- 
stant cortege of his august predecessor,) goes modestly on foot. No 
Duchess of Queensbury will he send out of the ball-room for not being 
dressed according to law. 

The abbey church made a great impression upon me. I saw it for the 
first time splendidly lighted, which greatly heightened the singular as- 
pect of its interior. I have often remarked that almost all the ancient 
churches of England are disfigured by scattered modern monuments. 
Here, however, there are so many, and they are placed with such an odd 
kind of symmetry, that the complete contrast they present to the simple 
and sublime architecture produces a new and peculiar kind of picturesque 
effect. — Imagine a noble lofty Gothic church, of the most graceful pro- 
portions, brilliantly lighted, and divided in the centre by a crimson cur- 
tain. The half immediately before you is an empty space, without chair, 
bench, or altar; the ground alone presents a continual mosaic of grave- 
stones with inscriptions. The walls are inlaid in the same manner up to 
a certain height, where a horizontal line divides them, without any inter- 
vening space, from the busts, statues, tablets and monuments of every 
kind, of polished black or white marble, or of porphyry, granite, or other 
coloured stone, which are ranged above: — the whole looks like a gallery 
of sculpture. Up to the line under these monuments, all was in brilliant 
light; higher up, it gradually softened away; and under the tracery of the 
arched roof, faded into dim twilight. The clerk and I were quite alone 
in this portion of the building, while a still more brilliant light gleamed 
from the other side of the glowing curtain, whence the softened voices of 
the congregation seemed to visit us from some invisible sanctuary. 

Many interesting names are recorded here; among others, the celebrated 
wit, Quin, to whom Garrick erected a marble bust with a poetical inscrip- 
tion. — Waller's bust has lost the nose; — it is asserted that James the Se- 
cond, in a fit of bigotry, struck it off" with his sword shortly after his ac- 
cession to the throne. 

59 



466 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

Dec. 23tf. 

Have you ever heard of the eccentric Beckford — a kind of Lord Byron 
in prose — who built the most magnificent residence in England, surround- 
ed his park with a wall twelve feet high, and for twelve years suffered 
nobody to enter it? All on a sudden he sold this wondrous dwelling, 
Fonthill Abbey, with all the rare and costly things it contained, by auc- 
tion, and went to Bath, where he lives in just as solitary a manner as be- 
fore. He has built a second high tower, (there was a celebrated one at 
Fonthill,) in the middle of a field; the roof of it is a copy of the so-called 
Lantern of Diogenes, (the monument of Lysicrates,) at Athens. Thither I 
drove to-day, and could imagine that the view from it must be as striking 
as it is said to be. There was however no admittance, and I was obliged 
to content myself with the pictures of my fancy. The tower is still un- 
finished, though very lofty; and stands, like a ghost, in the wide open 
solitude of a high table-land. The possessor is said, at one time, to have 
been worth three millions sterling, and is still very rich. I was told that 
he was seldom visible, but that when he rode out it was with the follow- 
ing retinue: — First rides a grayheaded old steward; behind him, two 
grooms with long hunting whips; then follows Mr. Beckford himself, sur- 
rounded by five or six dogs; two more grooms with whips close the pro- 
cession. If in the course of the ride one of the dogs is refractory, the 
whole train halts, and castigation is immediately applied with the whips; 
this course of education is continued through the whole ride. Mr. Beck- 
ford formerly wrote a very singular, but most powerful romance, in 
French: it was translated into English, and greatly admired. A high 
tower plays a conspicuous part in that also: the denouement is, that the 
Devil carries off everybody. 

I must send you another anecdote or two of this extraordinary man.— 
When he was living at Fonthill, a neighbouring Lord was tormented by 
such an intense curiosity to see the place that he caused a high ladder to 
be set against the wall, and climbed over by night. He was soon disco- 
vered, and taken before Mr. Beckford; who, on hearing his name, con- 
trary to his expectations, received him very courteously, conducted him 
all over his house and grounds in the morning, and entertained him in a 
princely manner; after which he retired, taking the most polite leave of 
his Lordship. The latter, delighted at the successful issue of his enter- 
prise, was hastening home; but found all the gates locked, and no one 
there to open them. He returned to the house to beg assistance; but was 
told that Mr. Beckford desired that he would return as he had come, — 
that he would find the ladder standing where he had left it. His Lord- 
ship replied with great asperity, but it was of no use; he must e'en return 
to the place of his clandestine entrance, and climb the ladder. Cured for 
ever of his curiosity, and venting curses on the spiteful misanthrope, he 
quitted the forbidden paradise. 

After Fonthill was sold, Mr. Beckford lived for a while in great 
seclusion in one of the suburbs of London. In the immediate neighbour- 
hood was a nursery garden, extremely celebrated for the beauty and 
rarity of its flowers. He walked in it daily, and paid fifty guineas a- 
week to the owner of it for permission to gather whatever flowers he 
liked. 

In the evening I visited the theatre, and found a very pretty house, 
but a very bad play. It was Rienzi, a miserable modern tragedy, which, 
with the graceless ranting of the players, excited neither tears nor 
laughter, — only disgust and ennui. I soon left Melpomene's desecrated 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 467 

temple, and visited my friend the clerk of the Abbey Church, to ask 
permission to see the church by moonlight. As soon as he had let me 
in, I dismissed him; and wandering like a solitary ghost among the 
pillars and tombs, I called up the more solemn tragedy of life, amid the 
awful stillness of night and death. 

Dec. 24th. 
The weather is still so bad, and hangs such a drapery over all distant 
objects, that I can make no excursions, and am obliged to confine myselt 
to the town; which indeed, by the number and variety of its prospects, 
affords interesting walks enough. I begin every time with my favourite 
monumental church, and finish with it. The architect who built this 
magnificent structure went quite out of the beaten track of ornaments 
and proportions. On the outside, for instance, near the great door, are 
two Jacob's ladders reaching to the roof, where the ascending angels are 
lost from sight. The busy heaven-stormers are extremely pretty; and 
the design appears to me conceived completely in the spirit of that fanci- 
ful architecture, which blended the most childish with the most sublime; 
the greatest minuteness of ornaments with the vastest effect of masses; 
which imitated the whole range of natural productions, — gigantic trunks 
of trees, and delicate foliage and flowers; awful rocks, and gaudy gems, 
men and beasts; and combined them all so as to strike our imaginations 
with wonder, reverence, and awe. This has always appeared to me the 
true romantic, i. e. true German, architecture; — the offspring of out- 
most peculiar spirit and fashion of mind. But I think we are now 
wholly estranged from it; it belongs to a more imaginative and meditative 
age. We may still admire and love its models, but we caa create nothing 
of the same kind, which does not bear the most obvious stamp of flat 
imitation. Steam-engines and Constitutions now prosper better than the 
arts, — of whatever kind. — To each age, its own. 

As I love contrasts, I went this evening straight from the temple 
crowded with the dead, to the market-place, equally populous in another 
way, and equally well lighted, where all sorts of provisions are sold 
under covered galleries. Every thing here is inviting and elegant; sub- 
jects for a thousand master-pieces of Flemish pencils; and a luxurious 
sight for the 'gastronome,' who here contemplates his beauties of Nature. 
Enormous pieces of beef, of a juicy red streaked with golden fat; well- 
fed poultry, looking as if stuffed with eider-down; magnificent vegetables; 
bright yellow butter; ripe and fresh fruit, and tempting fish, presented a 
picture such as my astonished eyes never beheld. The whole was 
heightened by the brilliancy of a hundred variegated lamps, and decorated 
with laurel and red-berried holly. Instead of one Weihnachtstisch,* here 
were a hundred; the caricatures of market-women did admirably for the 
gingerbread dolls, (Pfefferkuchenpuppen,) and we buyers for the curious 
and wondering children. The most brilliant assembly could hardly have 
amused me more. When I saw a grave-looking sheep holding a candle 
in each foot, and thus lighting himself; or a hanging fowl, in whose rump 
they had stuck a red wax taper; a calf's head with a lantern between its 
teeth, next neighbour to a great gander illuminated by two huge altar 
tapers; or an ox-tail, through which a gas tube was passed, ending 
pompously in a tuft of flame,— I made the most diverting comparisons 

* The decorated well-replenished table well set out in every family on Christmas 
eve. — Trans. 



468 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

with an assembly in my native land; and found the resemblances often 

more striking than those of the celebrated portrait-painters W and 

S . 

Living is very cheap here, especially in the so-called boarding-houses, 
where a man is well lodged and admirably boarded for two or three 
guineas a-week, and finds agreeable and easy society: equipages are not 
wanted, as sedan-chairs are still in use. 

Eight-and-twenty hours have at length appeased the angry heavens, 
and to-day was what is here called "a glorious day,"— -a day, that is, in 
which the sun occasionally peeps out from between the clouds. You 
may be sure that I took advantage of it: I ascended the hill near the 
town, from which you have a bird's-eye view of the whole, and can dis- 
tinguish almost every separate house. The Abbey church lies, like the 
kernel, in the centre; the streets radiate upwards in every direction, and 
in the bottom of the valley the Avon winds like a silver riband. I con- 
tinued my way along a pretty walk to Prior Park, a large and formerly 
splendid mansion, built by a haughty Lord, but now possessed by a meek 
Quaker, who lets the house stand empty, and, true to the simplicity of 
his faith, lives in the stable. 

Thus passed the morning.— By twilight and moonlight I took another 
walk to the other side of the town, and found the view still more magni- 
ficent in the stillness of the clear night. The sky was of a pale green, 
and on the right hand masses of black deeply indented clouds were piled 
up. The hills cut their rounded outlines sharply upon the clear sky, 
while the whole valley was filled with one curtain of blue mist, through 
which you saw the glimmering of a thousand lamps, without being able 
to distinguish the houses. It seemed a sea of mist, out of which count- 
less stars twinkled with multiplied rays. 

I closed the day with a hot bath in the principal bathing establishment; 
and found the accommodations convenient, clean and cheap, and the at- 
tendants prompt and respectful. 

Dec. 9,6th. 

The bad habit of reading in bed occasioned me a laughable misfortune 
last night. My hair caught fire, and I was forced to bury my head in the 
bed-clothes to extinguish it. The injury is horrible; — one entire half of my 
hair was destroyed, so that I have been obliged to have it cut almost close 
to my head all over. Happily my strength does not reside in my hair. 

A letter from you consoled me on waking. Your fable of the nightin- 
gale is charming. Had L imagined that, and in his twentieth year 

said, "Be dead to the world till your five-and-thirtieth," how brilliantly 
and prosperously could he now (according to the world's standard) enter 
it. In the course of that time I too have often accused the world and 
others; but when dispassionately viewed, this is as foolish as it is unjust. 
The world is, and will be, the world; and to reproach it with all the evil 
that accrues to us from it, is to be like the child who would beat the fire 
because he has burnt his finger in it. L should therefore regret no- 
thing; for if he had slept fifteen years like a marmot, he would not have 
enjoyed animation or consciousness. Let us stick to the belief, * que tout 
est pour le mieux dans ce meilleur des mondes.' 

Heartily wishing that you may always clearly perceive this great truth, 
I take my leave of you most tenderly, and am, as ever, 

Your faithful L— — — . 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 469 

LETTER XL VI. 

Salisbury, December 27th, 1828. 
Beloved Friend, 

Yesterday evening at seven o'clock I left Bath, again by the mail, for 
Salisbury. My only companion was a widow in deep mourning; notwith- 
standing which, she had already found a lover, whom we took up outside 
the town. He entertained us, whenever he spoke of any thing but farm- 
ing, with those horrible occurrences of which the English are so fond that 
the columns of their newspapers are daily filled with them. Perhaps he 
was one of their 'accident makers,' for he was inexhaustible in horrors. 
He asserted that the Holyhead mail (the same by which I came) had been 
washed away by a waterspout; and horses, coachman, and one of the pas- 
sengers, drowned 

After some hours the loving pair left me, at a place where the* widow 
was proprietress of an inn (probably the real object of John Bull's ten- 
derness,) and I was quite alone. My solitude was not of long duration, 
for a very pretty young girl, whom we overtook in the dark, begged that we 
would take her on to Salisbury, as she must otherwise pass the night in 
the nearest village. I very willingly took upon myself the cost of her 
journey. She was very grateful; and told me she was a dress-maker, and 
had gone to pass her Christmas with her parents; and that she had staid 
rather too late, but had reckoned on the chance of getting a cast by the 
mail. — We reached this city at midnight, where a good supper but a cold 
and smoky bedchamber awaited me. 

December 0,8th. 
Early in the morning I was awakened by the monotonous patter of a 
gentle rain, so that I am still sitting over my breakfast and my book. A 
good book is a true electrical machine: one's own thoughts often dart 
forth like flashes; — they generally, however, vanish as quickly; for if one 
tries to fix them at the moment with pen and ink, the enjoyment is at an 
end; and afterwards, as with dreams, it is not worth the pains. The 
book by which I electrified myself to-day, is a very ingenious and admi- 
rable combination of the fundamentals of history, geography, and astro- 
nomy, adapted for self-instruction. These little encyclopaedias are really 
one of the great conveniences of our times. Accurate knowledge of de- 
tails is indeed necessary to the accomplishment of any thing useful, but 
the walls must be built before the rooms can be adorned. In either sort 
of study, superficial or profound, I hold self-irfstruction to be the most 
efficacious; at least so it has always been with 'me. It is, however, cer- 
tain that many men can, in no way, acquire any real knowledge. If, for 
instance, they study history, they never perceive the Eternal* and the 
True: to them it remains a mere chronicle, which their admirable memory 
enables them to keep at their fingers' ends. Every other science is learn- 
ed in a like mechanical manner, and consists of mere words. And yet 
this is precisely the sort of knowledge commonly called fundamental; in- 
deed, most examiners by profession require no other. 'The absurdities 
still committed by these learned persons in many places, would furnish 
abundance of most diverting anecdotes if they were brought to light. I 
know a young man who had to undergo a diplomatic examination a short 
time ago, in a certain Residenz. He was asked " how much a cubic foot 



470 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

of wood weighed?" Pity he did not answer, " How much does a gold 
coin weigh?" or, "How much brains does a dolt's head contain?" An- 
other was asked in the course of a military examination, "Which was 
the most remarkable siege?" The respondent (a nationalized German) 
answered, without the slightest hesitation, " The siege of Jericho, be- 
cause the walls were blown down with trumpets." Conundrums might 
be made out of these examinations; indeed I rather think that tiresome 
diversion sprung from them. 

Many clergymen still ask, "Do you believe in the Devil?" A 'mau- 
vais plaisant,' who did not care much for being turned back, lately re- 
plied, 'Samiel, help!' 

Evening. 

About three o'clock the sky cleared a little; and as I had waited only 
for that, I jumped into the bespoken gig, and drove as hard as an old 
hunter would carry me to Stonehenge, the great druidical temple, burial 
place, or sacrificial altar. The country round Salisbury is fertde, but 
without trees and in no way picturesque. The wondrous Stonehenge 
stands on a wide, bare, elevated plain. The orange disk of the cloudless 
sun touched the horizon just as, astounded at the inexplicable monument 
before me, I approached the nearest stone, which the setting beams tinged 
with rose-colour. It is no wonder that popular superstition ascribes this 
singular group to demoniac power, for scarcely could another such work 
be achieved with all the mechanical means and contrivances of our times. 
How then was it possible for a nearly barbarous people to erect such 
masses, or to transport them thirty miles, the distance. of the nearest 
quarry?* Some have maintained that it was merely a sport of Nature, but 
no one who sees it will assent to this. 

I was not the only spectator. A solitary stranger was visible from time 
to time, who, without seeming to perceive me, had been going round and 
round among the stones incessantly for the last quarter of an hour. He 
was evidently counting, and seemed very impatient at something. The 
next time he emerged, I took the liberty to ask him the cause of his sin- 
gular demeanour; on which he politely answered, " that he had been told 
no one could count these stones aright; that every time the number was 
different; and that this was a trick which Satan, the author of the work, 
played the curious: that he had within the last two hours confirmed the 
truth of this statement seven times, and that he should inevitably lose his 
senses if he tried again." I advised him to leave off, and go home, as it 
was growing dark, and Satan might play him a worse trick than this. He 
fixed his eyes upon me sarcastically, and with what .the Scotch call a very 
* uncanny' expression, loftked about him as if for somebody; then suddenly 
exclaiming "Good-bye, Sir!" strode off, like Peter Schlemil, casting no 
shadow, ('tis true the sun was set,) with seven-league steps across the 
down, where he disappeared behind the hill. I now likewise hastened to 
depart, and trotted on towards the high tower of Salisbury Cathedral, 
which was just visible in the twilight. Scarcely had I gone a mile, when 
the high crazy gig broke, and the driver and I were thrown, not very 
softly, on the turf. The old horse ran off with the shafts, neighing mer- 
rily, towards the city. While we were crawling up, we heard the trotting 
of a horse behind us; — it was the stranger, who galloped by on a fine black 
horse, and cried out to me, "The Devil sends his best compliments to 

* The description in detail is omitted, as familiar to the English reader. — Trans. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 471 

you, Sir, 'au revoir;' " and darted off' like a whirlwind. This je9t was 
really provoking. "0, you untimely jester!" exclaimed I, "give us 
help, instead of your ' fadaises.' " But the echo of his horse's hoofs alone 
answered me through the darkness. The driver ran almost a mile after 
our horse, but came back without any tidings of him. As there was not 
even a hut near, we were obliged to make up our minds to walk the re- 
maining six miles. Never did a road seem to me more tedious; and I 
found little compensation in the wonders which the driver related of his 
hunter, when, twenty years' ago, he was the 'leader of the ' Salisbury 
hunt.' 

December 29th. 

I have turned this day to very good account, but brought home a vio- 
lent head-ache in the evening, probably the effect of my last night's ad- 
venture. 

Salisbury's far-famed Cathedral boasts of the highest tower in Europe. 
It is four hundred and ten feet high,— five feet higher than the Minster 
at Strasburg, if I mistake not. It is at any rate far more beautiful. The 
exterior is peculiarly distinguished by an air of newness and neatness, 
and by the perfection of its details. For this it is indebted to two grand 
repairs which in the course of time it has undergone; the first, under the 
superintendence of Sir Christopher Wren; the second, of Mr. Wyatt. 
The site of this church is also peculiar. It stands like a model, perfectly 
free and isolated on a smooth-shaven plain of short turf, on one side of 
which is the Bishop's palace, on the other high lime-trees. The tower 
terminates in an obelisk-like spire, with a cross, on which, rather omi- 
nously, a weather-cock is planted. This tasteless custom disgraces most 
of the Gothic churches in England. The tower is five-and-twenty inches 
out of the perpendicular. This is not visible, except on the inside, where 
the inclination of the pillars is perceptible. The interior of this magnifi- 
cent temple is in the highest degree imposing, and has been improved by 
Wyatt's genius. It was an admirable idea. to remove the most remarkable 
old monuments from the walls and obscure corners, and to place them in 
the space between the grand double avenues of pillars, whose unbroken 
height would almost turn the head giddy. Nothing can have a finer effect 
than these rows of Gothic sarcophagi, on which the figures of knights or 
priests lie stretched in their eternal sleep, while their habiliments or ar- 
mour of stone or metal are lighted with rainbow-tints from the painted 
windows. Among Templars and other knights, I discovered 'Richard 
Longsword,' who came to England with the Conqueror: near him, a giant 
figure in alabaster, the sword-bearer of Henry the Seventh, who fell at 
Bosworth Field, where he fought with two long swords, one in each hand, 
with which he is here represented. 

The cloisters are also very beautiful. Long finely proportioned corri- 
dors run at right-angles around the chapter-house, which is supported, 
like the Remter in Marienburg, by a single pillar in thatcentre. The 
bas-reliefs, which surround it in a broad entablature, seem to be of very 
fine workmanship, but were half destroyed in Cromwell's time. In the 
centre stands a worm-eaten oaken table of the thirteenth century, on 
which — as it seems from tolerably credible tradition — the labourers em- 
ployed in building the church were paid every evening, at the rate of a 
penny a-day. The ascent of the spire is very difficult: the latter half 
must be climbed by slender ladders, like the Stephansthurin in Vienna. 



472 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

At length you reach a little door in the roof, thirty feet under the exlreme 
point. Out of this door, the man who weekly oils the weathercock as- 
cends, in so perilous a manner that it appears inconceivable how a man 
of seventy can accomplish it. From this door, or rather window, to the 
top, is, as I have said, a distance of thirty feet, along which there are no 
other means of climbing than by iron hooks projecting from the outside. 
The old man gets out of the little window backwards; then, on account 
of a sort of penthouse over the window, is obliged to bend- his body for- 
ward, and in that posture to feel for the first hook, without being able to 
see it. When he has reached it, and caught fast hold, he swings himself 
up to it, hanging in the air, while he feels out the projection over the 
window with his feet, after which he climbs from hook to hook. It would 
certainly be easy to contrive a more convenient and less dangerous ascent; 
but he has been used to it from his childhood, and will not have it altered. 
Even at night he has made this terrific ascent, and is delighted that 
scarcely any strangers, not even sailors, who generally climb the most 
impracticable places, have ventured to follow him. 

As we reached the first outer gallery around the tower, the guide point- 
ed out to me a hawk which hung poised in air twenty or thirty feet above 
us. " For many years," said he, " a pair of these birds have built in the 
tower, and live on the Bishop's pigeons. I often see one or other of them 
hanging above the cross, and then suddenly pounce upon a bird: they 
sometimes let it fall on the roof or gallery of the church, but never stop 
to pick up prey which has once fallen, — they let it lie and rot there, if I 
don't remove it." 

The Bishop's palace and garden lay in a picturesque group beneath us, 
and all the chimneys were smoking merrily, for, ' His Lordship' was just 
arrived, but was preparing for a journey to a watering-place. The guide 
thought that they saw the ' Lord Bishop' twice or three times a-year in 
the cathedral. * His Lordship' never preaches: his sacred functions con- 
sist, as it seems, in the spending of fifteen thousand a-year with as much 
good taste as it has pleased God to bestow upon him; — the labour is" 
sufficiently performed by subalterns. This beautiful Establishment is 
the only one we on the Continent want to complete our felicity, — the 
only one which it is worth our while to copy from England. On my re- 
turn, I walked for some time longer in the darkening church, amid the 
noble monuments of old heroes, whom my imagination summoned from 
their tombs. 

I took care to secure a more substantial carriage than that of yesterday, 
and drove very comfortably to Wilton, the beautiful seat of the Earl of 
Pembroke. Here is a valuable collection of antiques, tastefully arranged 
by the deceased Earl, who was a great lover of art. It is placed in a 
broad gallery running round the inner court, communicating with the 
apartments on the ground-floor, and finely lighted from one side. It af- 
fords a most interesting walk, winter and summer, and is within a few 
steps of every upom. The windows are ornamented with the coats of arms, 
in coloured glass, of all the families with which the Earls of Pembroke 
have been allied by marriage, — a rich collection, which includes even the 
royal arms of England. In the halls are placed the coats of armour of the 
old warriors of the family, and those of their most distinguished prisoners; 
among them, the Grand Constable Montmorenci, a French Prince of the 
blood, and several others. Unquestionably these old recollections of a 
high and puissant aristocracy have their poetical side. 



ICELAND, AND FRANCE. 473 

The Chatelaine who conducted me about seemed herself to have 
crept out of a colossal coat of armour: she was full six feet high, and 
of a very masculine aspect, nor could anybody be better versed in 
the history of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, she murdered 
the names of Roman emperors and Grecian sages most barbarously. 
She explained some rathe-r equivocal subjects quite circumstantially, 
and in very droll connoisseur language. 

One of the adjoining rooms is filled with family portraits, which 
derive more of their value and splendour from the hand of Holbein or 
Vandyke than from the personages they represent. After a certain 
lapse of time, the nobility of genius outshines that of birth, 'comrne 
de raison.' The house contains several other valuable pictures; among 
which an Interment of Christ by Albrecht Diirer, executed in the 
most finished manner in water-colours, was the most striking. 

The Countess's garden, upon which the library opens, is laid out 
in the old French style, and is terminated by a small very richly or- 
namented temple, which has one great singularity. It was built by 
Holbein, but does no credit to his taste: it is, on the contrary, an ugly 
overloaded thing. The garden is extremely pretty and elegant: it re- 
flects honour on English women of rank, that most of them are dis- 
tinguished for their taste and skill in this beautiful art. We should 
fall into a great mistake if we hoped that any English gardener what- 
ever were capable of producing such master-pieces of garden decora- 
tion as I have described to you in my former letters.* These all owe 
their existence to the genius and the charming taste for the embellish- 
ment of home which characterize their fair owners. 

As it was positively forbidden to admit any stranger without a 
written order from the possessor, I should not have obtained a sight 
of the house had I not practised a stratagem, which the lord of the 
mansion will of course forgive, if he ever knows it. I announced my- 
self to the Chatelaine as a Russian relative of the family, with a name 
she could neither read nor speak. — It is really too annoying to drive 
four miles for an express purpose, and then to turn back without ac- 
complishing it : I therefore lay my oblige falsehood entirely at the 
door of these inhuman English manners. With us, people are not so 
cruel ; and never will an Englishman have to complain of similar il- 
liberality in Germany. . 

On the other side of the town lies an interesting place, Langford, 
the seat of the Earl of Radnor; an extensive park, and very old castle 
of strange triangular form, with enormously massy towers whose 
walls are like mosaic. In insignificant, low and ill-furnished rooms 
I found one of the most precious collections of pictures; master- 
pieces of the greatest painters; hidden treasures, which nobody sees 
and nobody knows of, — of which so many exist in English private 
houses. There is a Sunrise and a Sunset by Claude. The morning 
exhibits ./Eneas with his followers landing on the happy shores of 
Italy, and makes one envy the new-comers to the paradise which this 
picture discloses to them. In the evening scene, the setting sun gilds 
the magnificent ruins of temples and palaces, whi„ch are surrounded 
by a solitary wild country; — they are allegorical representations of 
the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Water, clouds, sky, trees, 

* The letters alluded to belong to the first part, which sec— Editor. — (See 
Preface.) 

60 






474 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 



the transparent quivering atmosphere, — it is all, as ever in Claude, 
Nature herself. It is difficult to imagine how a man in his five-and- 
thirtieth year could be a cook and a colour-grinder, and in his five- 
and-fortieth give to the world such unequalled productions. The 
wondrously beautiful head of a Magdalen by Guido, whose tearful 
eyes and warm rosy moulh certainly seem to invite rather to a thou- 
sand kisses than to repentance; a Holy Family by Andrea del Sarto, 
brilliant in all the pomp of colour; and many other ' chef-d'oeuvres' 
of the most illustrious masters, riveted me for many hours. A por- 
trait of Count Egmont would have served but ill as a frontispiece to 
Gothe's tragedy ; for the joyous-hearted, magnificent visionary, here 
appears a corpulent man of forty, with a bald pate and a thoroughly 
every-day physiognomy. His friend of Orange, hanging near him, 
exhibited a face of far different intellectual character. Between them 
hung the gloomy Alba, who pursued cruelty as a luxury. 

Besides the pictures and some antiques, this seat contains a rare 
and precious curiosity, — a chair or throne of steel, which the city of 
Augsburgh gave to the Emperor Rudolph the Second, which Gusta- 
vus Adolphus stole, and an ancestor of Lord Radnor's bought at 
Stockholm. The workmanship is admirable. How do all the fine steel 
works of our day, — those of Birmingham, or the Berlin iron orna- 
ments — fade before this splendid piece of art into miserable trifles 
and toys ! You think you see before you a work of Benvenuto Cellini; 
and know not which to admire most, the fine execution and the ele- 
gance of the details, or the tasteful and artist-like disposition of the 
whole. 

London, December 31st. 

Yesterday I was obliged to sacrifice to my hereditary foe ' migraine:' 
to-day I travelled in continual rain to the metropolis, and shall depart 
to-morrow morning for France. — The country had little in it attrac- 
tive; but the conversation on the outside of the coach was the more 
animated. It turned, during nearly the whole day, on a famous 'box- 
ing-match,' in which a Yankee had, it seemed, cheated a John Bull; 
and, bribed by the principal patrons of the art, had won ten thousand 
pounds. Cheating, in every kind of 'sport,' is as completely in the 
common order of things in England, among the" highest classes as 
well as the lowest, as false play was in the time of the Count de Gram- 
mont. It is no uncommon thing to hear ' gentlemen' boast of it almost 
openly ; and I never found that those who are regarded as ' the most 
knowing ones' had suffered in their reputation in consequence; — ' au 
contrairc,' they pass for cleverer than their neighbours; and you are 
only now and then warned with a smile to take care what you are 
about with them. Some of the highest members of the aristocracy 
are quite notorious for their achievements of this description. I heard 
from good authority, that the father of a nobleman of sporting cele- 
brity, to whom some one was expressing his solicitude lest his son 
should be cheated by a ' Blacklegs,' answered, "lam much more 
afraid for the Blacklegs than for my son !" To every country its cus- 
toms!* — Another characteristic trait of England, though in a lower 
step in society, was, that the coachman who drove us had lost two 
hundred pounds in this same unlucky match, and onjy laughed at it; 

• Ldndlkh, aittlich, — a German proverb, to which I do not recollect any corres- 
ponding English one. — Tbaksi. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 475 

giving us significantly to understand that he should soon find another 
dupe, who should pay it him back with interest. What advances must 
the 'march of intellect' make on the continent before the postillions 
of the Prince of Tour and Taxis, or the Eilwagen drivers of the Herr 
von Nagler will be able to lay such bets with their passengers! 

Some miles from Windsor we passed through a sort of country 
uncommon in England, consisting only of sand and pebbles. A mag- 
nificent building, with a park and garden, has been erected here,— - 
the New Military College, which is fitted up with all the luxury of a 
princely residence. The sand and stones made me feel at home, — not 
so the palace. While I was eyeing the soil with looks of tender af- 
fection, i car a toute ame bien nee la patrie est chere,' we saw a gray 
old fox, which with sweeping brush galloped across the heath. Our 
bet-loving coachman saw him first, and cried out, "By God, a fox! a 
fox !" " It's a dog," replied a passenger. " I bet you five to four 'tis 
a fox," rejoined the steed-compelling hero. "Done!" replied the 
doubter — and soon had to pay ; for it was indeed an indubitable fox, 
though of extraordinary size. Several hounds, who had lost the scent, 
now ran in sight, and a few red coats were also visible. All the pas- 
sengers on the mail screamed and hallooed to them which way the 
fox was gone, but could not make them understand. The time of the 
mail is rigorously fixed, and all unnecessary delays forbidden : but 
here was a national calamity impending; the pack and the hunters 
had lost the fox J The coachman drew up, and several sprang down 
to show the party, which now every moment increased, the right way. 
We did not get afloat again till we saw the whole hunt once more in 
full pursuit; whereupon we all waved our hats, and shouted 'Tally- 
ho!' As soon as our consciences were thus entirely set at ease, and 
the fox delivered over to his inevitable fate, the coachman whipped 
on his horses to make up for the delay, and the rest of the way we 
dashed along at a rattling gallop, as if the Wild Huntsman himself 
were at our heels. 

Dover, January 1st, 1829. 

The box of the mail-coach is become my throne, from which I oc- 
casionally assume the reins of government, and direct four rapid steeds 
with great skill. I proudly 'overlook the country, hurry forwards, 
which every governor cannot boast; and yet wish for wings that I 
might the sooner get home to you. 

I found all the towers in Canterbury decorated with flags in cele- 
bration of New-year's day. I commemorated it in the proudest and 
most beautiful of all English cathedrals. This romantic edifice, be- 
gun by the Saxons, continued by the Normans, and recently restored 
with great judgment, forms three distinct and yet connected church- 
es; with many irregular chapels and staircases, black and white mar- 
ble floors, and a forest of pillars in harmonious confusion. The yellow 
tone of the sandstone is very advantageous, especially in the Norman 
part of the church, where it is beautifully relieved by the black marble 
columns. Here lies the brazen effigy of the Black Prince, on a sarco- 
phagus of stone. Over him hang his half-mouldered gloves, and the 
sword and shield he wore at Poictiers. A number of other monuments 
adorn the church; — among them, those of Henry the Fourth and Tho- 
mas a Becket, who was killed, in one of the adjoining chapels. A 
great part of the old painter 7 window is preserved, and is unrivalled 



476 LETTERS ON ENGLAND,. 

in the splendour of its colours. Some parts of it are only patterns 
and arabesques, like transparent carpets of velvet: others appear like 
jewellery formed of every variety of precious stones. But few contain 
historical subjects. What gives this magnificent cathedral a great 
pre-eminence over every other in England, is, that there is no screen 
in the middle to cut and obstruct the view, and you see the whole ex- 
tent of the aisle, — from four to five hundred paces long, — at one glance. 
The organ is concealed in one of the upper galleries, and when it 
sounds produces a magical effect. I timed my visit so luckily, that 
just as I was going out, almost in the dark, the choristers began to 
sing, and their beautiful music filled the church, at the same time that 
the last sunbeam glowed through the window in tints of sapphire and 
ruby. The Archbishop of Canterbury is primate of England, and the 
only subject in Great Britain, except the princes of the blood, who 
has the dignity of prince. I believe, however, he enjoys it only in his 
see, not in London. This Protestant clergyman has sixty thousand a 
year and may marry; — more I know not by which to distinguish him 
from the Catholic ecclesiastical princes. 

Calais, Jan. Zncl. 

At length I set my foot once more in beloved France. However 
little advantageous is the first contrast, I yet greet this, my half-na- 
tive soil, the purer air, the easier, kinder, franker manners, almost 
with the feeling of a man escaped from a long imprisonment. 

We waked at five o'clock in the morning at Dover, and got on 
board the packet in utter darkness. We had already walked up and 
down for at least half an hour before there appeared any preparation 
for sailing. On a sudden the. rumour was spread that the ' boiler' was 
damaged. The most timid immediately made their escape to shore; 
the others cried out for the Captain, who was nowhere to be found. 
At last he sent a man to tell us that we could not sail without danger, 
and our luggage was accordingly transferred to a French steam-packet 
which was to sail at eight o'clock. I employed the interval in seeing 
the sun rise from the fort which crowns the lofty chalk cliffs above 
the town. The English, who have money enough to execute every 
useful plan, have cut a passage through the cliff, forming a kind of 
funnel, in which two winding staircases lead to the height of two hun- 
dred and forty feet. The view from the top is highly picturesque, 
and the sun arose out of the sea, almost cloudless, over the extensive 
prospect. I was in such an ecstacy at the scene that I nearly lost my 
passage. The vessel sailed the moment I was on board. A violent 
wind carried us over in two hours and a half. The sea-sickness, this 
time, was endurable; and an excellent dinner, such an one as no Eng- 
lish inn can offer, soon restored me. This Hotel (Bourbon) is, as far 
as cookery goes, one of the best in France. 

Jan. 3rd. 

My first morning walk in France was quite delicious to me. The 
unbroken sunshine; the clear sky, which I had not seen for so long; 
a town in which the houses are not put in eternal mourning by coal 
smoke, and stood out bright and sharp from the atmosphere, made 
me feel at home again, and I walked down to the harbour to take my 
last farewell of the sea. There it lay before me, boundless every- 
where except in one spot, where a black line of something, like cloud, 
probably the concentrated fog and smoke'of the island, denoted the 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE- 477 

existence of the English coast. I followed the jetty (a sort of wooden 
dam), and found myself at length entirely alone. I saw nothing liv- 
ing but a sea-bird, swimming by with the swiftness of lightning, often 
diving, and then after an interval of several minutes reappearing at 
some distant spot. He continued this sport a long while; and so agile 
and full of enjoyment did the creature seem, that I could almost fancy 
he took pleasure in exhibiting his feats to me. I was giving in to a 
train of fancies which insensibly grew out of this exhibition, when I 
heard the step and the voices of an English family behind me, — and 
away we went, bird and I. 

On the ramparts I met a French bonne with two English children, 
miracles of beauty, and very elegantly dressed in scarlet cachemire 
and white. The youngest had taken fast hold of a tree; and with true 
English love of liberty and determination, refused in the most de- 
cided manner to go home. The poor French girl vainly murdered 
all sorts of English coaxings and threats which she could command. 
" Mon darling, come, allons," exclaimed she, in a tone of distress. 
"I wont," was the laconic answer. The stubborn little creature in- 
terested me so much that I walked up to the tree to try my luck with 
her. I had better success; for after a few jokes in English, she fol- 
lowed me readily, and I led her in triumph to her bonne. But as I 
was going away, the little devil seized me with all her might by the 
coat, and said, laughing aloud, "No no, you shan't go now; you 
forced me away from the.tree, and now I'll force you to stay with usl" 
And I actually could not escape, till, amid playing and battling, dur- 
ing which she never quitted her hold of me, we reached the door of 
her parents' house. "Now I have done with you," cried the little 
thing, while she ran shouting and laughing into the house. "You 
little flirt!" cried I after her, " French education will bring forth little 
fruit in you." 

Returning to the town, I visited the celebrated B . I see you 

turn over the ' Dictionnaire Historique et des Con temporalis' in vain. 
Has he distinguished himself in a revolution, or a counter-revolution? 
Is he a warrior or a statesman? ' Vous n'y etes pas.' He is less and 
greater, — as you choose to take it. In a word, he is the most illus- 
trious, and was, in his time, the most puissant of dandies London 

ever knew. At one period B ruled a whole generation by the cut 

of his coat; and leather breeches went out of fashion because all men 
despaired of being able to reach the perfection of his. When at length, 
for weighty reasons, he turned his back on Great Britain, he be- 
queathed to the land of his birth, as his last gift, the immortal secret 
of starched cravats, the unfathomableness of which had so tormented 
the 'elegants' of the metropolis that, according to the ' Literary Ga- 
zette,' two of them had put an end to their lives in despair, and a 
youthful Duke had died miserably 'of a broken heart.' The founda- 
tion of this malady had however been laid earlier. On one occasion, 

when he had just received a new coat, he modestly asked B his 

opinion of it. B , casting a slight glance at it, asked, with an air 

of surprise, "Do you call that. thing a coat?" The poor young man's 
sense of honour received an incurable wound. 

Although it is no longer dress by which a man gives the ton in 
London, it is merely the vehicle that is altered — not the thing. The 
influence which Br , without birth or fortune, without a fine per- 
son or a superior intellect, merely by a lofty sort of impudence, a droll 



478 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

originality, love of company, and talent in dress, acquired and main- 
tained for many years in London society, forms an admirable criterion, 
by which the tone and quality of that society may be estimated; and 
as I have briefly described in my former letters some of those who 

now occupy the place B once filled, you will perhaps agree with 

me, that he excelled them in good-humour and social qualities, as 
well as in innocence of manners. It was a more frank, and, at the 
same time, more original and harmless folly, which bore the same 
comparison to that of his successors, that the comedy and the mo- 
rality of Holberg do to those of Kotzebue. 

Play at length accomplished what even the hostility of the heir to 
the throne could not. He lost every thing, and was obliged to flee; 
since which time he has lived in Calais, and every bird of passage 
from the fashionable world dutifully pays the former patriarch the 
tribute of a visit, or of an invitation to dinner. 

This I did also, though under my assumed name. Unfortunately, 
in the matter of dinner T had been forestalled by another stranger, 
and I cannot therefore judge how a coat really ought to look; or 
whether his long residence in Calais, added to increasing years, have 
rendered the dress of the former king of fashion less classical; for I 
found him at his second toilet, in a flowered chintz dressing-gown, 
velvet night-cap with gold tassel, and Turkish slippers, shaving, and 
rubbing the remains of his teeth with his favourite red root. The 
furniture of his rooms was elegant enough, part of it might even be 
called rich, though faded; and I cannot deny that the whole man 
seemed to me to correspond with it. Though, depressed by his pre- 
sent situation, he exhibited a considerable fund of humour and good- 
nature. Hir air was that of good society; simple and natural, and 
marked by more urbanity than the dandies of the present race are 
capable of. With a smile he showed me his Paris peruque, which 
he extolled at the cost of the English ones, and called himself ' le ci- 
devant jeune homme qui passe sa vie entre Paris et Londres. ' He 
appeared somewhat curious about me; asked me questions concern- 
ing people and things in London, without belying his good breeding 
by any kind of intrusiveness ; and then took occasion to convince me 
that he was still perfectly well-informed as to all that was passing in 
the English world of fashion, as well as of politics. " Je suis au fait 
de tout," exclaimed he; "mais a quoi cela me sert-il? On me laisse 
mourir de faim ici. J'espere pourtant que mon ancien ami, le Due 

de W enverra un beau jour le Consul d'ici a la Chine, et qu' 

eusuite il me nommera a sa place. Alors je suis sauve. " * * * 
And surely the English nation ought in justice to do something for 
the man who invented starched cravats! How many did I see in Lon- 
don in the enjoyment of large sinecures, who had done far less for 
their country. 

As I took my leave, and was going down stairs, he opened the door 
and called after me, "J'espere que vous trouverez votre chemin, mon 
Suisse n'est pas la, je crains." "Helas!" thought I, "point d'argent, 
point de Suisse." 

That I may not leave you too long without intelligence, I despatch 
this letter from hence. Probably I shall soon follow it. I shall, how- 
ever, stay at least a fortnight in Paris, and execute all your commis- 
sions. Meanwhile think of me with your usual affection. 

Your faithful L . 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 479 

LETTER XLVII. 

Paris, January 5th, 1829. 
My most dear and valued Friend, 

I could not write to you yesterday, because the diligence takes 
two days and a night to go from Calais to Paris, though it stops but 
once in twelve hours to eat, and then only for half an hour. The 
ride is not the most agreeable. The whole country, and even its me- 
tropolis, certainly appears somewhat dead, miserable, and dirty, af- 
ter the rolling torrent of business, the splendour and the neatness of 
England. The contrast is doubly striking at this short distance. 
When you look at the grotesque machine in which you are seated, 
the wretchedly harnessed cart-horses by which you are slowly drag- 
ged along, and remember the noble horses, the elegant light-built 
coaches, the beautiful harness ornamented with bright brass and po- 
lished leather of England, you think you are transported a thousand 
miles in a dream. The bad roads, the miserable and dirty towns, 
awaken the same feeling. On the other hand, four things are mani- 
festly better here, — climate, eating and drinking, cheapness, and so- 
ciability. ' Mais commencons par le commencement.' After I had 
exchanged my incognito passport for one equally provisional, and 
valid only as far as Paris, in the course of which operation I had 
nearly forgotten my new name, I approached the wonderful struc- 
ture, which in France people have agreed to call a diligence. The 
monster was as long as a house, and consisted, in fact, of four dis- 
tinct carriages, grown, as it were, together; the berime in the mid- 
dle; a coach with a basket for luggage behind; a coupe in front; 
and a cabriolet above, where the conducteur sits, and where I also 
had perched myself. This conducteur, an old soldier of Napoleon's 
Garde, was dressed like a wagoner, in a blue blouze, with a stitch- 
ed cap of the same material on his head. The postillion was a still 
more extraordinary figure, and really looked almost like a savage : 
be too wore a blouze, under which appeared monstrous boots coated 
with mud; but besides this he wore an apron of untanned black 
sheep's-skin, which hung down nearly to his knees. He drove six 
horses, harnessed three-and-three, which drew a weight of six thou- 
sand pounds over a very bad road. The whole road from Calais to 
Paris is one of the most melancholy and uninteresting I ever saw. I 
should therefore have read nearly all the way, had not the conversa- 
tion of the conducteur afforded me better entertainment. His own 
heroic deeds and those of the Garde were an inexhaustible theme; 
and he assured me without the slightest hesitation, "que les trente 
mille homines dont il faisoit partie dans ce tempsla," (that was his 
expression,) " auraient ete plus que suffisans pour conquerir toutes 
les nations de la terre, et que les autres n'avaient fait que gater 1'af- 
faire." He sighed every time he thought of his Emperor. "Mais 

e'est sa faute," exclaimed he, "ah! s d il serait encore 

Empereur, si dans les cent jours il avait seulement voulu employer 
de jeunes gens qui desiraient /aire fortune, au lieu de ces vieux Mare- 
chaux qui etaient trop riches, et qui avaient tous peur de leurs fem- 
mes. N'etaient ils pas tous gros et gras commes des monstres ? 
Ah ! parlez moi d'un jeune, Colonel, comme nous en avions ! Celui- 
la vous aurait flanque 9a de la jolie maniere. — Mais apres tout l'Em- 



% * t 

480 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

pereur aurait du se faira tuer a Waterloo comrae notre Colonel. Eh 
bien, Monsieur, ce brave Colonel avait recu trois coups de feu, un 
a la jambe, et deux dans le corps, et pourtant il nous men ait encore 
a l'attaque, porte par deux grenadiers. Mais quand tout fut en vain et 
tout fini pour nous; Camerades, dit-il, j'ai fait ce que j'ai pu, mais 
nous voila. • — Je ne puis plus rend re service a l'Empereur, a quoi 
bon vivre plus long temps ? Adieu done, mes Camerades — Vive 
l'Empereur ! Et le voila qui tire son pistolet, et le decharge dans sa 
bouche. C'est ainsi, ma foi, que l'Empereur aurait du finir aussi. " 

Here we were interrupted by a pretty girl, who ran out of a poor- 
looking house by the road side, and called up to us, (for we were at 
least eight ells from the ground,) " Ah 9a, Monsieur Je Conducteur, 
oubliez vous les craipes ? " O ho ! es tu la, mon enfant ?" and he 
rapidly scrambled down the accustomed break-neck steps, made the 
postillion stop, and disappeared in the house. After a few minutes 
he came out with a packet, seated himself with an air of great satis- 
faction by me, and unfolded a prodigious store of hot smoking Ger- 
man Plinzen, a dish which, as he told me, he had learned to like so 
much in Germany, that he had imported it into his own country. 
Conquests are, you see, productive of some good. With French 
politeness he immediately begged me to partake of his ' goute,' as 
he called it ; and patriotism alone would have led. me to accept his 
offer with pleasure. I must however admit that no farmer in Ger- 
many could have prepared his national dish better. 

He was greatly troubled and distressed by a strange machine, 
nearly in the form of a pump, placed near his seat, with which he 
was incessantly busied; now pumping at it with all his might, then 
putting it in order, screwing it round or turning it backwards and 
forwards. On inquiry, I learned that this was a most admirable 
newly-invented piece of machinery, for the purpose of retarding the 
diligence without the aid of a drag-shoe. The conducteur was 
amazingly proud of this contrivance, never called it by any other 
name than ' sa mechanique,' and treated it with equal tenderness and 
reverence. Unhappily this prodigy broke the first day ; and as we 
were forced in consequence to creep more slowly than before, the 
poor hero had to endure a good many jokes from the passengers, on 
the frailty of his ' mechanique,' as well as on the name of his huge ve- 
hicle, ' l'Hirondelle,' a name which truly seemed to have been given 
it in the bitterest irony. 

It was irresistibly droll to hear the poor devil, at every relay, re- 
gularly advertise the postillion of the misfortune which had happened. 
The following dialogue, with few variations, always ensued : " Mon 
enfant, il faut que tu saches que je n'ai plus de mechanique." " Com- 
ment, s d , plus de mechanique?" "Ma mechanique fait 

encore un peu, vois-tu, mais c'est tres peu de chose, le principal 
brancheron est au diable." "Ah, diable!" 

It was impossible to be worse seated, or to travel more uncom- 
fortably or tediously than I in my lofty cabriolet: and indeed I had 
now been for some time deprived of my most familiar comforts : yet 
never were my health or my spirits better than during this whole 
journey : I felt uninterrupted cheerfulness and content, because I 
was completely free. Oh ! inestimable blessing of freedom, never 
do we value thee enough ! If every man would but clearly ascer- 
tain what were actually necessary to his individual happiness and 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 481 

content, and would unconditionally choose what best promised to 
secure that end, and heartily reject all the rest (for we cannot have 
everything at once in this world), how many mistakes were avoided, 
how much petty ambition crushed, how much true joy and pleasure 
promoted ! All would find a great over-proportion of happiness in 
life, instead of torturing themselves to the very brink of the grave to 
obtain what gives them neither tranquillity nor enjoyment. 

I will not weary you with any further details of so uninteresting 
a journey. It was like the melo-drame " One o'clock," and as tire- 
some. The day we left Calais we stopped at one to dine ; at one in 
the morning we supped : the next day at one we had breakfast or 
dinner at Beauvais, where a pretty girl who waited on us, and a 
friend of Bolivar's, who told us a great deal about the disinterested- 
ness of the Liberator, made us regret our quick departure ; and again, 
at one in the morning, we had to fight for our luggage at the Cus- 
tom-house at Paris. My servant put mine upon a ' charrette' which 
a man crowded before us through the dark and dirty streets to the 
Hotel St. Maurice, where 1 am now writing to you in a little room 
in which the cold wind whistles through all the doors and windows, 
so that the blazing fire in the chimney warms me only on one side. 
The silken hangings, as well as the quantity of dirt they cover; the 
number of looking-glasses ; the large blocks of wood on the fire ; the 
tile parquet, — all recall vividly to my mind that I am in France, and 
not in England. 

I shall rest here a few days and make my purchases, and then 
hasten to you, without, if possible, seeing one acquaintance ; ' car 
cela m'entrainerait trop,' Do not, therefore, expect to hear any- 
thing new from old Paris, A few detached remarks arc all that I 
shall have to offer you. 

January 6th. 

To make some defence against the extreme cold, which I have 
always found most insufferable in France and Italy, from the want 
of all provision against it, I was obliged to-day to have all the chinks 
in my little lodging stuffed with ' bourlets. ' When this was done, I 
sallied forth to take the customary first walk of strangers, — to the Bou- 
levards, the Palais Royal, Tuilleries, &c. for I was curious to see what 
alterations had taken place in the course of seven years. On the 
Boulevards I found all just as it was: in the Palais Royal, the Duke 
of Orleans has begun to substitute new stone buildings and an elegant 
covered way for the narrow old wooden galleries, and other holes 
and corners. When it is finished, this palace will certainly be one 
of the most magnificent, as it has always been one of the most sin- 
gular and striking, in the world. Perhaps there is no other instance 
of a royal prince inhabiting the same house with several hundred 
shopkeepers, and as many inmates of a less reputable description, 
and deriving from them a revenue much more than sufficient for his 
' menus plaisirs. ' In England a nobleman would think the existence 
of such a society under his roof impossible ; but could it by any means 
find admittance, he would at least take care to have it cleaner. 

In the palace of the Tuilleries and the Rue Rivoli all the improve- 
ments which Napoleon began were in much the same state as he left 
them. In this point of view Paris has lost much in the Imperial 
dynasty, which would have rendered it a truly magnificent city, and 

61 



482 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the luxury of decoration must soon have been followed by that of 
cleanliness. One is tempted to wish that the Pont de Louis Seize 
were among the unfinished things; for the ludicrously theatrical sta- 
tues, at least twice too big in proportion to the bridge, and seeming 
to crush the pillars they stand upon, have much more the air of bad 
' acteurs de province' than of the heroes they are meant to represent. 

As cooks are to be numbered among the heroes of France, first on 
account of their unequalled skill, and secondly of their sense of ho- 
nour, (remember Vatel,) I come naturally in this place to the restau- 
rateurs. Judging by the most eminent whom I visited to-day, I think 
they have somewhat degenerated. They have, to be sure, exchanged 
their inconveniently long ' carte' for an elegantly bound book ; but the 
quality of the dishes and wines seems to have deteriorated in propor- 
tion to the increase of luxury in the announcement of them. After 
coming to this melancholy conviction, I hastened to the once celebrat- 
ed ' Rocher de Cancale.' But Baleine has launched into the sea of 
eternity; and the traveller who now trusts to the rock of Cancale, 
builds upon the sand : ' Sic transit gloria mundi.' 

On the other hand I must give all praise to the Theatre de Madame, 
where I spent my evening. Leontine Fay is a most delightful actress, 
and a better 'ensemble' it would be difficult to find. Coming directly 
from England, I was particularly struck with the consummate truth 
and nature with which Leontine Fay represented the French girl edu- 
cated in England, yet without suffering this nuance to break in any 
degree the harmony and keeping of the character. It is impossible 
to discover in her admirable acting the slightest imitation of Made- 
moiselle Mars ; and yet it presents as true, as tender, as pathetic a 
copy of nature, in a totally different manner. — The second piece, a 
farce, was given with that genuine ease and comic expression which 
make these French ' Riens' so delightful and amusing in Paris, while 
they appear so vapid and absurd in a German translation. The story 
is this : — A provincial uncle secretly leaves his little country town, in 
which he has just been chosen a member of a 'Societe de la Vertu,' 
in order to reclaim his nephew, of whom he has received the most 
discouraging accounts, from his wild courses. Instead of which his 
nephew's companions get hold of him, and draw him into all sorts of 
scrapes and excesses. 

Mademoiselle Minette brings, by her coquetry, old Martin to give 
her a kiss, at which moment her lover, the waiter, comes in with a 
pig's head, stands speechless with amazement, and at length letting 
the head slide slowly off the dish, cries out, "N'y a't-il pas de quoi 
perdre la tete?" This certainly is a silly jest enough, yet one must 
be very stoically inclined not to laugh heartily at the admirable drol- 
lery of the acting. The rest is as diverting: Martin, alarmed at 
having been caught in such an adventure, at length consoles himself 
with the thought that he is not known here; and in the midst of his 
'embarras,' accepts an invitation to a 'dejeuner' from Dorval, who 
has just come in. The 'dejeuner' is given at the theatre. Martin 
at first is very temperate; but at length the truffles and dainties tempt 
him, 'et puis il faut absolument les arroser d'un peu de Champagne." 
After much pressing on the part of his hosts, and much moralizing 
on his own, he consents to drink one glass 'a la vertu.' Helas, il 
n'y a que le premier pas qui coute.' A second glass follows, 'a la 
piete;' — a third, 'a la misericorde ;' and before the guests depart, we 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 483 

hear Martin, drunk and joyous, join in the toast, ' Vivent les femmes 
et le vin!' Play follows: — at first he will only join in a game of 
piquet; from piquet he is led on to ecarte, and from ecarte to hazard; 
loses a large sum, and at last learns, 'pour le combler de confusion,' 
that he and his plan were betrayed from the first, and that his ne- 
phew had put him to the trial instead of being tried by him, and 
had unfortunately found him very frail. He gladly agrees to all 
that is required of him, ' pourvu qu'on lui garde le secret ;' and the 
piece concludes with the arrival of his old friend, who comes by 
extra post to announce to him that he (Martin) was yesterday elect- 
ed by acclamation president of the ' Societe de la Vertu' in his na- 
tive town. 

Jan. 7th. 

In spite of the 'bourlets' and a burning pile of wood in my chim- 
ney, I continue to be almost frozen in my 'entresol.' There pre- 
vails moreover a constant 'clair-obscur,' so that I see the writing 
implements before me as if behind a veil. The small windows and 
high opposite houses render this irremediable; you must forgive me, 
therefore, if my writing is more unintelligible than usual. You must 
have remarked that the preposterously high rate of postage in Eng- 
land taught me to write more carefully, and especially smaller; so 
that a Lavater of handwritings might study my character in the mere 
aspect of my letters to you. It is in this, as in life; we are often 
led by good motives to begin to contract in various ways: soon how- 
ever the lines involuntarily expand; and before we are conscious of 
it, the unfelt but irresistible power of habit leads us back to our old 
latitude. 

An English officer, whom I found to-day in the Cafe Anglais, re- 
peatedly asked the astonished 'garcon' for 'la charte,' concluding I 
suppose, that in liberal France it formed a part of the furniture of 
every cafe. Although the French seldom take any notice of the 
'qui pro quos' of foreigners, this was too remarkable not to draw 
forth a smile from several. I thought, however, — how willingly 
would some reverse the Englishman's blunder, and give the French 
people ' cartes' instead of ' chartes.' 

I was greatly surprised in the evening at the Opera Francais, which 
I had left a kind of bedlam, where a few maniacs screamed with 
agony as if on the rack, and where I now found sweet singing in 
the best Italian style, united to very good acting. Rossini, who, like 
a second Orpheus, has tamed even this savage opera, is. a real musi- 
cal benefactor; and natives as well as foreigners have reason to bless 
him for the salvation of their ears. I prefer this now, though it is 
not the fashion to do so, to the Italian Opera. It combines nearly 
all that one can desire in a theatre; — the good singing and acting I 
have mentioned, with magnificent decorations, and the best ballet in 
the world. If the text of the operas were fine poetry, I know not 
what further could be wished; but even as they are, one may be 
very well content; for instance, with the ' Muette de Portici,' which 
I saw to-day. Mademoiselle Noblet's acting is full of grace and 
animation, without the least exaggeration. The elder Nourrit is an 
admirable Massaniello, though he, and he alone, sometimes scream- 
ed too loud. The costumi were models; but Vesuvius did not ex- 
plode and flame properly, and the clouds of smoke which sunk into 



484 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

the earth instead of ascending from it, were a phenomenon which I 
had not the good fortune to witness when I ' assistai' at a real erup- 
tion of that mountain. 

Jan. 8th. 

A French writer somewhere says, " L'on dit que nous sommes 
des enfans; — oui, pour les faiblesses, mais pas pour le bonheur." 
This, thank God ! I can by no means say of myself. ' Je le suis pour 
1'un et pour l'autre,' in spite of my three dozen years. I amuse my- 
self here in the solitude of this great city uncommonly well, and can 
fancy myself a young man just entering the world, and everything 
•new to me. In the mornings I see sights, saunter from one museum 
to another, or go 'shopping.' (This word signifies to go from shop 
to shop buying trifles, such as luxury is always inventing in Paris 
and London.) I have already collected a hundred little presents for 
you, so that my small apartment can hardly contain them, and yet I 
have scarcely spent eighty pounds sterling for them. In England it 
is the clearness, but here the cheapness, that is expensive. I am 
often constrained to laugh when I see that a cunning French shop- 
keeper thinks he has cheated a stiff islander admirably, while the 
latter goes off in astonishment at having bought things for a sixth 
part of what he had given for the very same in London. 

I continue my scientific researches among the restaurateurs, which 
occupy me till evening, when I go to the theatre, though I have not 
time to complete the course either of the one or the other. 

During my ' shopping' to-day in the Palais Royal, I observed an 
affiche announcing the wonderful exhibition of the death of Prince 
Poniatowski at Leipsic. I am loath to omit anything of this national 
kind, so that I ascended a miserable dirty staircase, where I found a 
shabbily dressed man sitting near a half-extinguished lamp, in a dark 
room without a window. A large table standing before him was 
covered with a dirty table-cloth. As soon as I entered he arose and 
hastened to light three other lamps, which however would not burn, 
whereupon he began to declaim vehemently. I thought the expla- 
nation was beginning, and asked what he had said, as I had not given 
proper attention. " Oh rien," was the reply, *' je parle seulement a mes 
lampes qui ne brulent pas clair. " After this conversation with the 
lamps had accomplished its end, the cloth was removed, and discover- 
ed a work of art which very much resembled a Nuremberg toy, with 
little moving figures, but on the assurance of the owner was well worth 
the entrance, money. In a nasal singing tone he began as follows: 
" Voila le fameux Prince Poniatowski, se tournant avec grace vers 
les ofneiers de son corps en s'ecriant, Quand on a tout perdu et qu'on 
n'a plus d'espoir, la vie est un opprobre et la mort un devoir. 

u Remarquez bien, Messieurs, (he always addressed me in the 
plural,) comme le cheval blanc du prince se tourne aussi lestement 
qu'un cheval veritable. Voyez, pan a droite — pan a gauche, — mais le 
voila qui s'elance, se cabre, se precipite dans la riviere, et disparait. " 
All this took place ; the figure was drawn by a thread first to the right, 
then to the left, then forward; and at last, by pulling away a slide 
painted to represent water, fell into a wheelbarrow that stood under the 
table. " Ah! — bien ! — voila le prince Poniatowski noye ! II est mort ! 
— C'est la premiere partie. Maintenant, Messieurs, vous allez voir 
tout a l'heure la chose la plus surprenante qui ait jamais ete montree 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 4S5 

en France. Tous ces petits soklats innombrables que vous apperce- 
vcz dcvant vous (tbcre were somewhere about sixty ov seventy), sont 
tous vraiment habilles; habits, gibernes, arraes, tout peut s'oter et se 
remettre a volonte! Les canons servent commes les canons veritables, 
et sont admires par tous les officiers de genie qui viennent ici." In 
order to give ocular demonstration of this, he took the little cannon off 
the carriage, and the sword-belt off the soldier, nearest to him, which 
was to serve as sufficient proof of his assertion. "Ah, — bien ! vous 
allez main ten ant, Messieurs, voir manoeuvrer cette petite armee com- 
me sur le champ de bataille. Chaque solclat et chaque cheval feront 
separement les mouvements propres, voyez! Hereupon the whole bo- 
dy of puppets, who had not moved during the first act, (probably out 
of respect for Prince Poniatowski,) now made two simultaneous move- 
ments to the sound of a drum which a little boy beat under the table: 
the soldiers shouldered their arms, and set them down again; the 
horses reared and kicked. While this was going on, the expositor re- 
counted the French bulletin of the affair with increasing pathos, — and 
thus closed the second act. I thought there could hardly be anything 
better to come ; and as a few fresh spectators had dropped in, and I 
found it impossible any longer to endure the horrid stench of two 
lamps which had gone out, I fled from the field of battle and all its 
wonders. Tragical enough was it, however, to see that gallant self- 
devoting hero so represented. 

I was much pleased at the Opera with young Nourrit's Count Ory. 
Connoisseurs may exclaim as they like against Rossini; — it is not the 
less true that in this, as in his other works, streams of melody enchant 
the ear, — now melting in tones of love, now thundering in tempests; 
rejoicing, triumphant, at the banquet of the knights, or rising in so- 
lemn adoration to heaven. It is curious enough that in this licentious 
opera, the prayer of the knight, which is represented as merely a piece 
of hypocrisy, is the very same which Rossini had composed for 
Charles the Tenth's coronation. Madame Cinti sung the part of the 
Countess very well ; Mademoiselle Javoureck, as her page, showed 
very handsome legs, and the bass singer was excellent. 

The ballet I thought not so good as usual. Albert and Paul are 
not grown lighter with years, and, except Noblet and Taglioni, there 
was no good female dancer. 

In the opera, I remarked that the same actor who played one of the 
principal parts in the ' Muette,' sustained a very obscure one to-night 
in the chorus of knights. Such things often occur here, and are wor- 
thy of all imitation. It is only when the best performers are obliged 
to concur in the 'ensemble,' be the part allotted to them great or 
small, that a truly excellent whole can be produced. For this 'en- 
semble' much more is generally done in France than in Germany, 
where the illusion is frequently broken by trifles which are sacrificed 
to the ease and convenience of the manager or actor. Hoffman used 
to say, that of all incongruities none had ever shocked him more than 
when, on the Berlin stage, a Geheimerath of Iffland's, after deporting 
himself in the most prosaic manner possible, suddenly, instead of go- 
ing out at the door in a human manner, vanished through the wall 
like mere air. 

Jan. 10. 

It is an agreeable surprise to find the Museum, after all that it has 
restored, still so abundantly rich. Denon's new ' Salles' now afford a 



486 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

worthy station to most of the statues. It is only a pity that the old 
galleries are not arranged in the same style. Much would not be lost 
by the demolition of the painted ceilings, which have no great merit 
in themselves, and harmonize so ill with statues. Sculpture and paint- 
ing should never be mixed. I shall not dwell on the well-known mas- 
ter-pieces; but let me mention to you some which particularly struck 
me, and which I do not remember to have seen before. 

First: A beautiful Venus, discovered a few years since in Milo, and 
presented to the King by the Due de Riviere. She is represented as 
■victrix; according to the opinion of antiquarians, either showing the 
apple, or holding the shield of Mars with both hands. Both arms are 
wanting, so that these are only hypotheses. But how exquisite is the 
whole person and attitude ! What life, what tender softness, and what 
perfection of form ! The proud triumphant expression of the face has 
the truth and nature of a woman, and the sublimity and power of a 
deity. 

Second : A female figure clothed in full drapery (called in the Ca- 
talogue 'Image de la Providence'); — a noble, idealized woman; — 
mildness and benignity in her countenance, divine repose in her whole 
person. The drapery perfect in grace and execution. 

Third: Cupid and Psyche, from the Villa Borghese. Psyche, sunk 
on her knees, is imploring Cupid's forgiveness, and the sweet smile 
on his lips shows that her prayer is inwardly accepted. Laymen, at 
least, can hardly look without rapture on the exquisite beauty of the 
forms, and the lovely expression of the countenances. The group is 
in such preservation, that only one hand of the God of Love appears 
to have been restored. 

Fourth: A Sleeping Nymph. The ancients, who understood how 
to present every object under the most beautiful point of view, fre- 
quently adorned their sarcophagi with such figures, as emblems of 
death. The sleep is evidently deep; but the attitude is almost volup- 
tuous: — the limbs exquisitely turned, and half concealed by drapery. 
The figure excites the thought rather of the new young life to come, 
than of the death which must precede it.* 

Fifth : A Gipsy, — remarkable for the mixture of stone and bronze. 
The figure is of the latter: the Lacedaemonian mantle, of the former. 
The head is modern, but has a very charming arch expression, per- 
fectly in character for a Zingarella, such as Italy still contains. 

Sixth: A magnificent Statue in an attitude of prayer. The head 
and neck, of white marble, have the severe ideal beauty of the antique; 
and the drapery, of the hardest porphyry, could not be more light 
and flowing in silk or velvet. 

Seventh: The colossal Melpomene gives its name to one of the new 
galleries, and below it an elegant bronze railing encloses some admi- 
rably executed imitations of antique mosaic by Professor Belloni. 
This is a very interesting invention, and I wonder to see it so little 
encouraged by the rich. 

Eighth: The bust of the youthful Augustus. A handsome, mild, 
and intelligent head; very different in expression, though with the 

* Thus should we ever regard, represent, and treat death. It is only a perverted 
view of Christianity (perhaps the Jewish groundwork of it), which has made death 
so gloomy, and with a coarse animal feeling, as unpoetical as it is disgusting, chosen 
skeletons and marks of decomposition as its emblems. — Editor. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 487 

same outline of features, from the statue which represents the empe- 
ror at a later period of life, when the power of circumstances and the 
influence of parties had hurried him into so many acts of tyranny and 
cruelty, till at length his native gentleness returned with the attain- 
ment of uncontested and unlimited power. 

Ninth: His great general, Agrippa. Never did I behold a more 
characteristic physiognomy, with a nobler outline. It is curious that 
the forehead and the upper part of the region of the eye have a strong 
resemblance to a man, who, though in a different sphere of activity, 
must be numbered among the great, — I mean Alexander von Humboldt. 
In the other part of the face the resemblance wholly disappears. The 
more I looked at this iron head, the more I was convinced that exactly 
such an one was necessary to enable the soft Augustus to become and 
to remain lord of the world. 

Tenth: The last, and at the same time most interesting to me, was 
a bust of Alexander, the only authentic one, as Denon affirms, in ex- 
istence; a perfect study for physiognomists and craniologists : for the 
fidelity of the artists of antiquity represented all the parts with equal 
care after the model of nature. This head has indeed all the truth of 
a portrait, not in the slightest degree idealized,* — not even remarka- 
bly beautiful in feature; but, in the extraordinary proportions and ex- 
pression, distinctly telling the history of the great original. The 
' abandon' of the character, sometimes amounting to levity, is clearly 
betrayed by the graceful inclination of the neck and the voluptuous 
beauty of the mouth. The forehead and jaw are strikingly like those 
of Napoleon, as is also the entire form of the skull, both behind and 
before (animal and intellectual.) The forehead is not too high, — it 
bespeaks no ideologist — but compact, and of iron strength. The fea- 
tures are generally regular and well turned, though, as I have already 
remarked, they have no pretensions to ideal beauty. Around the eye 
and nose reigns acuteness of mind, united with determined courage 
and a singular elevated astuteness, and at the same time with that 
disposition towards sensual pleasures, which combine to render Alex- 
ander such as he stands alone in history, — a youthful hero, no less 
invincible than amiable, — a hero realizing all the dreams of poetry and 
fiction. Gifted with the same combination of qualities, neither Charles 
the Twelfth of Sweden nor Napoleon would have met their overthrow 
in Russia; nor would the one now be regarded as a mere Don Quix- 
ote, nor the other as a man who employed his powers only as a calcu- 
lating tyrant. The whole forms a being whose aspect is in the high- 
est degree attractive, and, though imposing, awakens in the spectator 
courage, love, and confidence. He feels himself happy and secure 
within the reflection of this wondrous countenance; and sees that such 
a man, in any condition of life, must have excited admiration and en- 
thusiasm, and have exercised boundless influence. 

I must mention one lovely bas-relief, and a singularly beautiful al- 
tar. The Bas-relief, for which, like so many others, France is indebt- 
ed to Napoleon, is from the Borghese collection. It represents Vulcan 
forging the shield for ./Eneas: Cyclops around him, all with genuine 
Silenus' and fauns' faces, are delightfully represented. But the most 
delightful figure of the group is a lovely little Cupid, half hiding him- 

* As Napoleon said of his own head : "Carree, autant de base que de hauteur." 
—Editor. 



48S LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

self behind the door with the cap of one of the Cyclops. All in this 
elegant composition is full of life, humour, and motion, and the truth 
of the forms and correctness of the outlines are masterly. 

The Altar, dedicated to twelve Deities, is in form like a Christian 
font. The twelve busts in alto-relievo surround it like a beautiful 
wreath. The workmanship is exquisite, and the preservation nearly 
perfect. The gods are placed in the following order : Jupiter, Mi- 
nerva, Apollo, Juno, Neptune, Vulcan, Mercury, Vesta, Ceres, Diana, 
all separate; lastly, Mars and Venus united by Cupid. I wonder that 
this graceful design has never been executed on a small scale in ala- 
baster, porcelain or glass, for ladies' bazaars, as the well-known cloves 
and other antique subjects are. Nothing could be better adapted for 
the purpose; and yet there was not even a plaster cast of it to be found 
at Jaquet's (the successor to Getti, 'mouleur du Musee;') nor had he 
any of the subjects I have mentioned, merely because they are not 
among the most celebrated; though some that are, are certainly not 
of a very attractive character. Men are terribly like ' les moutous de 
Panurge:' they implicitly follow authority, and suffer that to prescribe 
to them what they shall like. 

In the picture-galleries, the forced restitutions would be consider- 
ably less remarked, if the places were not filled by so many pictures 
of the modern French school, which I confess, with very few excep- 
tions, produce somewhat the effect of caricatures upon me. The the- 
atrical attitudes, the stage dignity, which even David's pictures fre- 
quently exhibit, and the continual exaggeration of passion, appear 
like the work of learners, compared with the noble fidelity to nature 
of the Italian masters, and even make us regret the charming truth 
and reality of the German and Flemish schools. Of all these famous 
moderns, Girodet displeased me the most: no healthy taste can look 
at his Deluge without disgust. Gerard's entry of Henry the Fourth 
appears to me a picture whose fame will endure. The number of 
Rubens' and Lesueur's pictures which have been brought from the 
Luxemburg, but ill replace the Raphaels, Leonardo da Vincis, and 
Vandykes, which have disappeared. In short, all that had been 
brought here since the Restoration, whether new or old, makes but 
an unfavourable impression. This is not lessened by the bad busts of 
painters which have been placed at regular intervals, and which, even 
were they better as specimens of sculpture, are wholly out of place 
in a collection of paintings. The magnificent long gallery affords, 
however, as before, the most agreeable winter walk; and the liberality 
which leaves it constantly accessible to strangers cannot be suffici- 
ently praised. 

When I think how still more deplorable is the state of painting in 
England, how little Italy and Germany now merit their former fame, 
I am tempted to fear that this art will share the fate of painting on 
glass; nay, that its most precious secrets are already irrecoverably 
lost. The breadth, power, truth and life of the old masters, their 
technical knowledge of colouring, — where arc they now to be found? 
Thorwaldson, Rauch, Danneker, Canova, rival the antique;* but 

* A countryman of August Wilhelm Schlegel ought to take shame to himself for 
the omission of the illustrious name of Flaxman, whose genius was cast in a mould 
far more purely, severely and elegantly Greek, than that of any modern sculptor 
whatever. — Trans. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 489 

where is the painter who can be placed by the side of the second-rate 
artists of the golden age of painting? 

In a side court of the Museum stands the colossal Sphinx from 
Drovetti's collection, destined for the court of the Louvre. It is of 
pale-red granite, and the sculpture is as grand as the mass is stupen- 
dous. It is perfectly intact, except the nose; this had just been re- 
placed by one of plaster of Paris, which had not received its last coat 
of colouring. The sight of it made me involuntarily laugh; and, 
thinking of the strange chain of events which had brought this giant 
hither, I internally exclaimed, " What do you here, you huge Egyp- 
tian, after a lapse of three thousand years, — in this new Babylon, 
where no sphinx can keep a secret, and where silence never found a 
home?" 

In the evening I went to the Theatre Porte St. Martin to see Faust, 
which was performed for the eightieth or ninetieth time. The cul- 
minating point of this melodrame is a waltz which Mephistopheles 
dances with Martha; and in truth it is impossible to dance more dia- 
bolically. It never fails to call forth thunders of applause, — and in 
one sense deserves it; for the pantomime is extremely expressive, and 
affects one in the same manner as jests intermingled with ghost sto- 
ries. Mephistopheles, though ugly, has the air of a gentleman, which 
is more than can be said for our German devils. 

The most remarkable part of the scenery is the Blocksberg, with 
all its horrors, which leave those of the Wolf's Glen far behind. Il- 
lumined by lurid lights of all colours, gleaming from behind dark 
pines and clefts in the rock, it swarmed with living skeletons, glitter- 
ing snakes, horrible monsters of deformity, headless or bleeding bo- 
dies, hideous witches, huge fiery giants' eyes glaring out of bushes, 
toads as big as men, and many other agreeable images of the like 
kind. In the last act, the scene-painter had gone rather too far, hav- 
ing represented heaven and hell at the same time. Heaven, which of 
course occupied the upper part of the scene, shone with a very beau- 
tiful pale-blue radiance; but this was so unbecoming to the complex- 
ion of Gretchen's soul, as well as to that of the angels who pirouetted 
round her, that they looked more like the corpses on the Blocksberg 
than the blessed in heaven. — The devils, who danced immediately 
under the wooden floor of heaven, had a much more advantageous 
tone of colour, which they certainly deserved for the zeal with which 
they tore the effigy of Faust into pieces till the curtain fell. 

The theatre itself is tastefully decorated with gay paintings and gold 
on a ground of white satin. The many-coloured flowers, birds and 
butterflies, have a very lively agreeable effect. The interior of the 
boxes is light blue, and the lining an imitation of red velvet. Besides 
the annoying cry of the limonadiers, who, to a German car, make such 
singular abbreviations of the words ' orgeat, limonade, glace,' there 
was a Jew who wandered about with ' lorgnettes,' which he let at ten 
sous for the evening; — a trade which I don't remember to have ob- 
served before, and which is very convenient to the public. 

This letter will probably travel to you by sledges, for we have a 
truly Russian climate, though unhappily no Russian stoves. Heaven 

send you a better temperature in B ! 

Your L 



62 



490 LETTERS ON ENGLAND 1 , 



LETTER XL VIII. 

Paris, January 12th, 1829. 
Dearest Julia, 

It certainly is a fine thing to have such a walk as the Louvre daily 
at one's command, and to take refuge from snow and rain in the hall 
of gods, and among the creations of genius. — 'Vive le roil' for this 
liberality at least. 

I spent my forenoon in the magnificent gallery, and also visited the 
Egyptian Museum, of which I shall tell you more anon. At dinner, 
I found an interesting companion in a General de l'Empire, whom I 
accidentally met, and whose conversation I preferred to the theatre. 
He related a number of incidents of which he had been eye and ear- 
witness: — they give a more vivid picture and a deeper view of all the 
bearings and relations of things at that time, than are to be gathered 
from memoirs, in which the truth can never be revealed wholly with- 
out concealment or colouring. It would occupy too much time to re- 
peat them all to you now; and besides, they would lose much of their 
vivacity: I therefore reserve the greater part for oral relations. — Only 
one or two. 

It is not to be denied, said my informant, that many vulgarities 
were observable in the interior of Napoleon's family, which betrayed 
'roture.' (By this he did not mean inferior birth, but a defective and 
ignoble education.) The greatest hatred and the most pitiful mutual 
intrigues reigned between the Bonaparte family and the Empress Jo- 
sephine, who at length fell their victim. At first, Napoleon took the 
part of his wife, and was often reproached for it by his mother, who 
called him tyrant, Tiberius, Nero, and other considerably less classi- 
cal names, to his face. The General assured me, that Madame had 
frequently told him that Napoleon, from his earliest infancy, had al- 
ways tried to rule despotically, and had never shown the slightest re- 
gard for any one but himself and those immediately belonging to him. 
He had tyrannized over all his brothers, with the exception of Lucien, 
who never suffered the least offence or injury to go unrevenged. She 
had often, she said, observed with astonishment how perfectly the 
brothers had retained their relative characters. The General affirmed, 
that Madame Letitia had the firmest persuasion that Napoleon would 
end ill; and made no secret of it, that she hoarded only against that 
catastrophe. Lucien shared in this persuasion; and as early as the 
year 1811, used the following remarkable words in speaking to the 
General : a L'ambition de cet homme est insatiable, et vous vivrez 
peutetre pour voir sa carcasse et toute sa famille jettees dans les 
egouts de Paris." 

At Napoleon's coronation, the Empress-mother, in whose house- 
hold the General held some office after he had quitted the military 
service (what, he did not tell me,) gave him strict charge to observe 
how many arm-chairs, chairs, and stools, had been placed for the 
imperial family, and to make his report to her unobserved as soon as 
she entered. The General, who had but little experience in court 
etiquette, wondered at this strange commission, executed it, however, 
punctually, and informed her there were but two 'fauteuils,' one chair, 
and so many 'tabourets.' " Ah ! je le pensais bien," cried Madame 
Mere, red with rage, " la chaise est pour moi — mais ils se trompent 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 491 

dans leur calcul!" Walking quickly up to the ominous chair, she 
asked the chamberlain on duty, with lips quivering with passion, 
* Where was her seat?' He motioned, with a deep bow, to the chair. 
The queens had already seated themselves on the * tabourets.' To 
snatch hold of the chair, throw it down on the feet of the unfortunate 
chamberlain, who nearly screamed with pain, and to rush into the 
closet where the Emperor and Josephine were waiting, was the affair 
of a moment to the exasperated mother. The most indecent scene fol- 
lowed, during which the Empress-mother declared in the most vehe- 
ment terms, that if a ' fauteuil,' were not instantly given her, she would 
leave the Salle, after explaining aloud the reason for her conduct. 
Napoleon, although furiously exasperated, was obliged to make ' bon- 
ne mine a mauvais jeu,' and got out of the scrape by throwing the 
whole blame on poor Count Segur; " et 1'on vit bientot," added the 
General, " le digne Comte arriver tout effare, et apporter lui-meme 
un fauteuil a sa Majeste l'Emperatrice Mere." It is characteristic, 
and a proof that the thing originated in no respect with Josephine, 
but entirely with the Emperor himself, that at the marriage of Maria 
Louisa the very same incident was repeated, — only that the humbled 
and intimidated mother had no longer courage to resist. 

Napoleon was brought up a bigot; and although too acute to re- 
main so, or indeed perhaps ever to have been so sincerely, habit — 
which exercises so strong an influence over us all — rendered it im- 
possible for him ever to divest himself entirely of first impressions. 
When any thing suddenly struck him, he sometimes involuntarily 
made the sign of the Cross, — a gesture which appeared most extraor- 
dinary to the sceptical children of the revolution. 

Now for one amiable trait of Charles the Fourth, whom the world 
•would be so little apt to suspect of any delicate attention. Those who 
knew him intimately, however, know that he was liberal and kind, 
though weak and ignorant; and much better as a man than as a king. 

When Lucien went to Spain as ambassador from the Republic, the 
General, my informant, accompanied him as secretary of legation. 
Lucien's predecessor had * affiche' all the coarseness of republican 
manners, to the infinite scandal of the most formal and stately court 
in the world; and the Spaniards dreaded still greater rudeness and 
arrogance from the brother of the First Consul. Lucien, however, 
had the good taste to take the completely opposite course ; appeared 
at court in shoes and bag-wig, and fulfilled all the duties of ceremony 
and etiquette with such punctuality, that the whole court was in a 
perfect ecstacy of delight and gratitude. Lucien was not only extreme- 
ly popular, but the perfect idol of the whole royal family. He return- 
ed their friendship, the General affirmed, sincerely, and often earnestly 
warned the King against the Prince of the Peace, as well as against 
the insatiable ambition of his own brother, of whom he spoke on every 
occasion without the slightest reserve. The confidence, however, of 
the old King in his ' grand ami,' as he called Napoleon, remained un- 
shaken to the last. 

Before his departure, Lucien crowned his popularity by a magni- 
ficent fete, the like of which had never been seen in Spain, and which 
cost nearly four hundred thousand francs. The highest persons about 
the court, a number of grandees, and the whole royal family honoured 
it with their presence ; and the latter seemed not to know how suffi- 
ciently to express their attachment to the ambassador, A few days 



492 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

afterwards, all the members of the legation received splendid presents; 
the ambassador alone was omitted ; and republican familiarity per- 
mitted many jokes upon him in the palace of the embassy. Mean- 
while the audience of leave was over, Lucien's departure fixed for the 
following day, and all hopes of the expected present at an end, when 
an officer of the Walloon guard came with an escort to tbe hotel, 
bringing a large picture in a packing-case, as a present from the 
King to Napoleon. When Lucien was informed of this, he said, it 
was doubtless Titian's Venus, which he had often admired in the 
King's presence, and which was certainly a very valuable picture, but 
that the carriage of it was inconvenient to him, and he must confess 
he had rather the King had not sent it. However, the officer was 
most politely thanked, and dismissed ; and Lucien, taking out a valua- 
ble shirt-pin from his breast, begged him to accept it. The ambas- 
sador now ordered the case to be unpacked, the picture taken out of 
its frame (which could be left behind), and rolled so that it could be 
carried on the imperial of a carriage. The secretary did as he desi- 
red : — scarcely was the Avrapping-cloth raised, when, instead of the 
admired Venus, a face anything but beautiful — that of the King him- 
self smiled upon him. He was just flying off in mischievous delight 
to inform the ambassador of the comical mistake, when on entirely 
removing the cloth, a yet greater surprise detained him : — the whole 
picture was set round like a miniature with large diamonds, which 
Lucien afterwards sold in Paris for four millions of francs. This 
was truly a royal surprise, and the ambassador speedily recalled his 
order for leaving the frame. 

The General asserted that Lucien was very intimate with the Queen 
of Portugal, who gave him a political rendezvous at Badajoz. He 
thought D — -— M — — was the result of this meeting. Certain it is, 
as you may remember I wrote you from London, that that prince is 
strikingly like Napoleon. 

January 13th. 

The turn of the Gaiete came to-day in my inspection of theatres, 
and I make bold to declare that I was. very much amused. These 
little melodrames and vaudevilles are now — the French may be as 
grand about it as they please — their real and proper national drama; 
and perhaps they are not altogether innocent of the striking defection 
of the public to the romantic banner. People were heartily tired of 
the meagre fare of the 



" pathos tragique 

Qui longtems ennuya en termes magnifiques." 

There was one evening on which I gave you no theatrical intelli- 
gence. The cause of this was the horrible ennui I had suffered at the 
Theatre Francais. Mademoiselle Mars did not play, and I found the 
parts of the great and matchless Talma and Fleury sunk into the 
most deplorable hands. In full contrast with this classical dulness, 
was the excellence of the melodrame of the Gaiete ; and in spite of all 
the long litany that may be repeated by classicists as to coarse co- 
louring, 'coups de theatre,' improbabilities, and so forth, I am per- 
suaded that no unprejudiced fresh mind could see it without lively 
interest. — Let us now go back to the Theatre Francais. 

After a Greco-French tragedy, in which antique dresses vainly 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 493 

strove to convert Frenchmen into Greeks, in which the provincial 
hero Joanny vainly tried to exhibit a faint copy of the godlike Talma, 
and Duchesnois, who is now really ' au dela de la permission' ugly, 
with whining, antiquated and stony manner, vainly quivered out the 
end of every sentence with her hands in the air (also a la Talma,) 
while all the rest exhibited a truly hopeless picture of mediocrity, 
the ' Mercure galant' was given as a conclusion. The faded embroi- 
dered silk clothes, as well as the awkwardness with which they were 
worn by the modern actors, spoke of the remote date of this piece. 
The ladies, on the other hand, had dressed according to their own 
taste, and were in the newest fashion. The comedy is utterly with- 
out plot, and the wit flat and coarse. 

Setting aside ' que tous les genres sont bons hors le genre ennuy- 
eux,' the contents of this latter piece were really better fitted to a 
booth in a fair. What appears still more extraordinary is, that this 
stately, classical, national theatre, has itself been driven to give melo- 
drames, (as to their contents at least,) though without music; and 
that these are the only representations which draw audiences. The 
only profitable modern piece, L'Espion, is a sufficient proof of this. 

Thus does one theatre after another plant the romantic standard 
with more or less success; and tragedies and plays ' a la Shakspeare,' 
as the French call them, daily make their appearance, in which all 
the time-honoured unities are thrown over the shoulder without any 
more qualms of conscience on the part of authors or the public. 

The revolution has regenerated France in every respect, — even 
their poetry is new; and ungrudging, never-envying Germany calls 
out joyfully to her, " Gluck auf." 

January \Alh. 

To-day I visited some new buildings ; among others the Bourse. 
It is surrounded with a stately colonnade, whose magnitude and total 
effect is imposing; but the long narrow-arched windows behind the 
pillars are in very bad taste. Modern necessities harmonize ill with 
ancient architecture. The interior is grand, and the illusion produced 
by the painting on the roof complete: you would swear they were bas- 
reliefs, — and very bad ones. 

I remarked to-day for the first time how much the Boulevards are 
improved by the removal of several houses: the Portes St. Martin and 
St Denis are seen to much greater advantage than before. Louis the 
Fourteenth deserves these monuments; for in truth, all that is grand 
and beautiful in Paris may be ascribed to him or to Napoleon. The 
rows of trees have been carefully preserved ; and not, as on the Don- 
hofsplatz in Berlin, large trees cut down and little miserable sticks 
planted in their stead. The numerous ' Dames blanches' and Omni- 
buses have a most singular appearance. These are carriages contain- 
ing twenty or thirty persons: they traverse the Boulevards incessantly, 
and convey the weary foot-passenger at a very moderate price. These 
ponderous machines are drawn by three unfortunate horses. In the 
present slippery state of the pavement I have several times seen all 
three fall together. It is said that England is the hell of horses : if, 
however, the metempsychosis should be realized, I beg leave to be an 
English horse rather than a French one. It rouses one's indignation 
to see how these unhappy animals are often treated, and it were to be 
wished that the police would here, as in England, take them under 



494 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

its protection. I remember once to have seenr'a poor hackney-coach 
horse maltreated by a coachman in London. "Come with me," said 
the Englishman with whom I was walking; " you shall soon see that 
fellow punished." He very coolly called the man and ordered him to 
drive to the nearest police office. He alighted, and accused the coach- 
man of having wantonly maltreated and tortured his horse. I was 
called on to give evidence to the same effect; and the fellow was sen- 
tenced to pay a considerable fine ; after which we made him drive us 
back : — you may imagine his good humour. 

Omnibuses are to be found in other parts of the city, and the long- 
est ' course' costs only a few sous. — I know few things more amusing 
than to ride about in them in an evening, without any definite aim, 
and only for the sake of the rich caricatures one meets with, and the 
odd conversations one hears. I was often tempted to believe that I 
was at the Varietes ; and I recognised the originals of many of Bru- 
nets and Odry's faithful portraits. You know how much I like to 
wander about the world thus, an observer of men and manners; espe- 
cially of the middle classes, among whom alone any characteristic 
peculiarities are now-a-days to be found, and who are also the hap- 
piest, — for the medal is completely reversed. The middle classes, 
down to the artisan, are now the really privileged, by the character of 
the times and of public opinion. The higher classes find themselves, 
with their privileges and pretensions, condemned to a state of inces- 
sant opposition and humiliation. If their claims be adequately sup- 
ported by wealth, their condition is tolerable; though even then, from 
ostentation, — the hereditary vice of those among the rich who are not 
slaves to avarice, — their money procures them far less substantial en- 
joyment than it does to those a step or two below them. If their rank 
is not upheld by property, they are of all classes in society,— except 
criminals and those who suffer from actual hunger, — the most pitiable. 

Every man ought therefore maturely to estimate his position in the 
world, and to sacrifice nothing to vanity or ambition ; for no epoch 
of the world was ever less fertile in rewards for such deference to the 
bad and frivolous part of public opinion. I do not mean, of course, 
the ambition of true merit, which is rewarded by its own results, and 
can be adequately rewarded by them alone. We nobles are now 
cheaply instructed in wise forbearance and practical philosophy of 
every kind ; — and Heaven be thanked ! 

With such thoughts I arrived in a * Dame blanche' at Franconi's 
theatre, to which a blind man might find his way by the scent. The 
performances are certainly in odiously bad taste, and a public which 
had no better amusements must end by becoming but one degree above 
the animals they look at. I speak of the senseless dramatic pieces 
acted here; — the mere feats of activity and skill are often very inter- 
esting. I was particularly delighted with the slack rope-dancer call- 
ed II Diavolo, who outdoes all his competitors as completely as Ves- 
tris surpasses his. A finer form, greater agility and steadiness and 
more finished grace, are hardly conceivable. He is the flying Mercu- 
ry descended again on earth in human shape; the air appears his 
natural element, and the rope a mere superfluity, with which he en- 
wreathes himself as with a garland. You see him at an enormous 
height lie along perfectly at his ease when the rope is in full swing; 
then float close to the boxes with the classic grace of an antique; then, 
with his head hanging down and his legs upwards, execute an 'en- 



IRELAND, AND PRANCE. 495 

trechat' in the clouds of the stage-heaven. You may suppose that he 
is perfect master of all the ordinary tours deforce of his art. He really 
deserves his name; ' II Diavolo non pu6 far' meglio. 

Jan. lAth. 

As appendix to my yesterday's letter, I bought you a 'Dame 

blanche' filled with bonbons ; and, as a present for Mademoiselle H 

next Christmas, a bronze pendule with a running fountain at its foot, 
and a real working telegraph on the top. Tell her she may use the 
latter to keep up conversations which none but the initiated can un- 
derstand. Paris is inexhaustible in such knicknacks: they are gene- 
rally destined for foreigners; the French seldom buy them, and think 
them, justly enough, ' de mauvais gout.' 

To have done with theatres I visited three this evening. First I 
saw two acts of the new and most miserable tragedy, Isabelle de 
Baviere, at the Theatre Francais. My previous impressions were 
confirmed ; and not only were the performers (with the exception of 
Joanny, who acted the part of Charles the Sixth pretty well) medi- 
ocrity itself, but the costumes, scenery, and all the appointments were 
below those of the smallest theatre on the Boulevards. The populace 
of Paris was represented by seven men and two women ; the ' Pairs 
de France' by three or four wretched sticks, literally in rags, with 
gold paper crowns on their heads, like those in a puppet-show. The 
house was empty, and the cold insufferable. I drove as quickly as I 
could to the ' Ambigu Comique,' where I found a pretty new house 
with very fresh decorations. As interlude, a sort of ballet was per- 
formed, which contained not a bad parody on the German Landwehr, 
and at any rate was not tiresome. I could not help wondering, how- 
ever, that the French do not feel about the Landwehr and the Prussian 
horns, as the Burgundians did about the Alp horns of the Swiss, 
whose tones they were not particularly fond of recalling; for, as the 
Chronicle says, * a Granson les avoient trop ouis. ' 

My evening closed with the Italian Opera. Here you find the most 
select audience ; it is the fashionable house. The theatre is prettily 
decorated, the lighting brilliant, and the singing exceeds expectation. 
Still it is curious, that even with a company composed entirely of Ita- 
lians the singing is never the same, — there is never that complete and 
inimitable whole, which you find in Italy: their fire seems chilled in 
these colder regions, — their humour dried up; they know that they 
shall be applauded, but that they no longer form one family with the 
audience; the buffo, as well as the first tragic singer, feels that he is 
but half understood, and, even musically speaking, but half felt. In 
Italy the Opera is nature, necessity; in Germany, England, and France, 
an enjoyment of art, or a way of killing time. 

The Opera was La Cenerentola. Madame Malibran Garcia does 
not, in my opinion, equal Sontag in this part: she has, however, her 
own ' genre,' which is the more attractive the longer one hears her; 
and I do not doubt that she too has parts in which she would bear away 
the palm from all competitors. She has married an American ; and 
her style of singing appeared to me quite American, — that is, free, 
daring, and republican: whilst Pasta, like an aristocrat, or rather like 
an autocrat, hurries one despotically away with her; and Sontag war- 
bles forth melting and 'mezza-voce' tones, as if from the heavenly re- 
gions. Bordogni, the tenore, had the difficult task of singing with- 



496 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

out a voice, and did all that was possible under such circumstances : 
Zuchelli was, as ever, admirable ; and Santini his worthy rival. Both 
acting and singing had throughout more of life, power and grace, 
than on any other Italian stage out of Italy. 

On my return to my hotel, I was surprised by one of those Parisian 
' agremens' which are really a disgrace to such a city. Though my 
hotel is one of the most respectable, and in the most frequented part 
of the town, I thought I was alighting at a ' cloaque. ' They were 
clearing certain excavations, an operation by which the houses here 
are poisoned twice a year. 

I have already burned a dozen pastiles, but can create no radical 
reaction. 

Jan \5th. 

I seated myself in a cabriolet early this morning, to make a wider 
excursion than usual. I directed the driver first to Notre Dame, and 
regretted as I passed the Pont Neuf that this spot had been assigned 
to the statue of Henry the Fourth. It stands most disproportionately 
on the naked base of the obelisk which Napoleon had projected, and 
for which the spot was chosen with great sagacity ; whereas now, 
surrounded by the broad and high masses of building which form the 
back-ground of the little statue and enclose it in a colossal triangle, 
the prancing horse looks like a skipping insect. While I was fol- 
lowing this train of observations, and thinking what Paris would have 
become had Napoleon's reign been prolonged, my driver suddenly 
cried out " Voila la Morgue!" I told him to stop ('car j'aime les 
Amotions lugubres),' and entered this house of death, which I had 
never before seen. Behind a lattice is a clean little room with eight 
wooden biers painted black, placed in a row, the heads turned to the 
wall, the feet towards the spectator. Upon these the dead bodies 
are laid naked, and the clothes and effects of each hung upon the 
white wall behind him, so that they can easily be recognised. There 
was only one; an old man with a genuine French physiognomy, rings 
in his ears and on his fingers. He lay with a smile on his face and 
open eyes like a wax figure, and with exactly such a mien as if he 
Were about to offer his neighbour a pinch of snuff, when death sur- 
prised him. His clothes were good, — " superbes," as a ragged fel- 
low near me said, while he looked at them with longing eyes. There 
were no marks of violence visible on the body; so that the stroke of 
death had probably surprised the old man in some remote part of the 
city, and was still unknown to his relatives : misery seemed to have 
no share in his fate. 

One of the guardians of the place told me a curious fact; — in win- 
ter, the number of deaths by drowning, which is now the fashionable 
mode of self-destruction in Paris, is less by two-thirds than in sum- 
mer. The cause of this can be no other, however ridiculous it may 
sound, than that the water is too cold, for the Seine is scarcely ever 
frozen. But as trifles and every-day things govern the great events 
of life much more than we are apt to think, so they appear to exer- 
cise their power even in death, and despair itself is still 'douillet,' 
and enthralled by the senses. 

You remember the three portals of Notre Dame, with the oaken 
doors ornamented with beautiful designs and arabesques in bronze, 
and how striking is the whole facade, how interesting its details. 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 497 

Unfortunately, like the temple at Jerusalem, the interior is defaced 
by stalls and booths. This interior, always so unworthy of the ex- 
terior, is rendered still more mean by a new coat of paint. 

Continuing my drive, I alighted for a minute at the Pantheon. It 
is a pity that the situation and entourage of this building are so unfa- 
vourable. The interior appeared to me almost too simple and bare 
of ornament, which does not suit this style ; and Girodet's new ceiling 
is hardly visible without a telescope. The opening of the cupola is 
too small and too high to enable one to see anything of the painting 
distinctly. I saw a piece of carpet hanging to one of the pillars, and 
asked what it meant: I was told that it was the work of the unhappy 
Marie Antoinette, and presented to the church by Madame. Over 
the side altar was written ' Autel privilegie.' 

The association of ideas which this inscription suggested, led me 
to the neighbouring menagerie, and I drove to the Jardin des Plantes. 
It was too cold for the animals, and almost all, living and dead, were 
shut up, so that I could only visit a Polar bear. I found him pa- 
tiently and quietly clearing out his den with his fore paws. He did 
not suffer my presence to interrupt him in the least, but went on 
•working like a labourer. He used his paws as brooms, then brought 
the straw and snow into his hole to make himself a comfortable bed, 
and at length with a sort of grumble of satisfaction slowly stretched 
himself out upon it. His neighbour Martin, the brown bear who once 
on a time ate a sentinel, is quite well, but not visible to-day. On my 
way back I visited a third church, St. Eustache. The interior is 
grander than that of the Pantheon or Notre Dame, and is enlivened 
by a few painted windows and pictures. There was indeed a sort of 
exhibition of the latter, on occasion of some festival : I cannot say 
that much good taste was conspicuous in it. A more agreeable thing 
was the fine music, in which the trumpets produced an overpowering 
effect. Why is not this sublime instrument oftener introduced into 
church music? 

As I drove across the Place des Victoires, I sent up a sigh to Hea- 
ven over the nothingness of fame and its monuments. On this place, 
as you well remember, stood Desaix's statue, which he had really 
deserved of France. Now it is thrown aside, and a Louis the Four- 
teenth in Roman armour, with a long wig, and mounted on a horse 
which looks like a wooden one, occupies its place. I had some diffi- 
culty in silencing the melancholy moraliziugs which this sight excited 
in me, by the more sensual impressions I received in the 'salon des 
Freres Provencaux,' from excellent truffies, and the perusal of a some- 
what less praiseworthy fashionable novel. I was even forced to drink 
a whole bottle of champagne before I could exclaim with Solomon, 
"All is vanity!" and add, "Therefore enjoy the. present moment 
without thinking too much about it." In this good frame of mind I 
passed through, for the last time, the Palais Royal, where so many 
gay * colifichets' and new inventions sparkled upon me from the well- 
lighted shops, that I almost took the full moon, which hung small and 
yellow over one of the opposite chimneys, for a new toy; and should 
not have been much surprised if the man in the moon or Mademoi- 
selle Garnerin had stepped out of it, and vanished again down one of 
Very's chimneys. But as nothing of this sort happened, I followed 
the brilliant front of the Varietes, which eclipsed the dim oil lamps 
around, and entered, ' pour y faire ma digestion en riant. 5 This end 

63 



498 LETTERS ON ENGLAND, 

was perfectly attained; for though the little theatre has lost Potier, it 
still retains its power over the risible muscles. It has gained — for the 
eyes at least — an extremely pretty little actress, Mademoiselle Vale- 
rie, and a much better and fresher exterior than formerly. Among 
the agreeable novelties is a drop curtain of real cloth, instead of the 
usual painted draperies. The rich folds of dark blue contrasted well 
with the crimson, gold, and white, of the theatre. It is not rolled up 
stiffly and awkwardly like the others, but draws back gracefully to 
either side. The great theatres would do well to imitate this. 

Jan. 16/A. 

Formerly Jlnas were the fashion; now it is Amas, ' et le change est 
pour le mieux.' To these Jimas I dedicated my morning, and began 
with the Jima of geography, the Georama. Here you suddenly find 
yourself in the centre of the globe, — which Dr. Nurnberger has not 
yet reached with his projected shaft; but in which you find the hypo- 
thesis of a sea of light confirmed, for it is so light that the whole 
crust of the earth is rendered transparent, and you can distinctly see 
even the political boundaries of countries. The excessive cold some- 
what chilled my curiosity, so that I can only tell you that no globe 
elucidates geography so well as the Georama. It were to be wished 
that all Lancasterian schools could be thus introduced into the bowels 
of the earth: such a company too might warm themselves 'mutuelle- 
ment.' The lakes appear, as in reality, beautifully blue and transpa- 
rent, the volcanoes little fiery points, and the black chains of moun- 
tains are easily followed by the eye. I was amused to see that the 
great lakes in China had the precise outline of the grotesque and 
frightful faces of Chinese gods. The largest was really, without any 
effort of the imagination, the. exact copy of the flying dragon so fre- 
quent on their porcelain. I hug myself amazingly on this discovery; 
— who knows if it will not throw some light on Chinese mythology ? 
I was much displeased at seeing no notice taken of the recent disco- 
veries at the North Pole, in Africa, and the Himalaya mountains. 
The whole affair appeared to me somewhat ' en decadence.' Instead 
of the pretty woman who generally sits at the bureau of all exhibitions 
of this sort in Paris, there was a terrific person who might have pas- 
sed for the Lepreux d'Aosta. 

The Diorama, a mile or so further, on the Boulevards, contains 
views of St. Gothard and of Venice. The former, on the Italian 
side, which I have seen 'in natura,' was well painted and very like; 
but as there is no change of light and shadow, as in the far superior 
Diorama in London, there is not the same variety and charm. Ve- 
nice was a bad painting, and the light so yellow that it looked as if 
its just indignation at the French, who destroyed its political exist- 
ence and then did not even keep it, had given it the jaundice. 

The Neorama places you in the centre of St. Peter's ; the illusion 
however is but faint, and the crowd of motionless figures, in a thing 
which pretends to perfect imitation, tends to break it. Only the 
sleeping or the dead can be appropriately introduced into such a 
scene. The festival of St. Peter is represented. Pope, cardinals, 
priests, and the Pope's guard 'en haye,' fill the church; and are so 
badly painted to boot, that I took His Holiness for an old dressing- 
gown hung before the Jove-like statue of Peter. 

Passing over the well-known Panoramas and Cosmoramas, I bring 



IRELAND, AND FRANCE. 499 

you at last to the Uranorama in the new Passage Vivienne. This is 
a very ingenious piece of mechanism, exhibiting the course of the 
planets and the solar system. I confess that I never had so clear an 
idea of these matters as after the hour I spent here. I shall tell you 
more about it by word of mouth. If you like to spend twelve hun- 
dred francs, you can have a small model of the whole machine, which 
every good library ought to possess. 

Thus then I began with the central point of the earth, then admired 
the various glories of its surface, and after a cursory visit to the pla- 
nets, left off in the sun. There wanted nothing but a final Jima repre- 
senting the seventh heaven and the houris, to complete my journey: 
I should have seen more than the Egyptian dervise in the five seconds 
during which his head was immersed in the pail of water. 

It is better that I drop the curtain here over my sayings and doings. 
When it is drawn up again in your presence, I shall stand before you. 
After I have refreshed all the powers of my mind there, I shall tell 
you my further plans ; — to dream away a winter amid pomegranates 
and oleanders ; to wander awhile under the palm-trees of Africa, and 
to look down on the wonders of Egypt from the summit of her pyra- 
mids. Till then, no more letters. 

Yours most faithfully, 



THE END. 



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279 85 « 



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